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BURNS AND TARBOLTON 



BY 

E. H. LETHAm, 

(ROBERT STEUART,) 
AUTHOR OF "legends FROM THE LOTHIANS.' 



Kilmarnock : D. Brown & Co. 

Glasgow: J. Menzies & Co. 

1900. 



^t 






PRINTED BY 

D. BROWN & CO., 

(SUCCESSORS TO JAMES M'KIE), 

OF THE ORIGINAL BURNS PRB 

KILMARNOCK. 



Gift 

'^R. HUTCHESON 

4 Ja' 



TO THE BURNS CLUBS 
OF THE WORLD, 

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED 

WITH 

THE author's hearty GOODWILL. 



CONTENTS. 

^ 

Page. 

Frontispiece 

Dedication, . . . - . - 

The Nucleus of the Parish, - - - - i 

The Village, - - 21 

Burns and Tarbolton, 47 

Around the Castle o' Montgomerie, - - 90 

Witchcraft in Kyle, 102 

Burns as Blackfoot, 113 

Epilogue, 125 

Appendix, - - 129 



THE NUCLEUS 
OF THE PARISH. 

'W^HE men of Stewart Kyle are loyal and patriotic, 
'kK' and, at their social gatherings, respond cordially 
to the usual sentiments, but their enthusiasm, the 
kindling eye and flushing cheek, and grip of hand to 
hand, is reserved for the toast of the evening — Burns and 
Tarbolton. 

And, indeed, the two are indissolubly connected, for the 
man cannot be separated from his surroundings, although 
he is mostly represented by himself alone, and without 
that local colouring, which might at once explain and 
excuse his actions. In this district his life's education 
may be said to have commenced; for what he after- 
wards developed, it must partly be responsible, so, if the 
schools in which the immortals are trained be deserving 
of notice, then surely this college of Tarbolton, through 
which Burns graduated into manhood, has especial claims 
to consideration. It is a place of great antiquity, and 
interesting for its own sake in many ways, and, while its 
manners and customs are worth studying, as part of our 
national social life — its connection with our national 
poet makes them still more so. 

The nucleus of the parish and clachan is undoubtedly 
that Hill of Baal's Fire, after which they are designated. 
The name is of Celtic derivation : Tor, as it once was, and 



still ought to be spelled, a round hill ; Bal, or Bel, or 
Baal, the sun god of the Pho3nicians ; and Teine or fire, 
corrupted into Ton. Like various other places in our 
country, it has preserved indications of pre-historic re- 
ligions, which are tantalising to the antiquary, from the 
absence of any data or details, with the exception of 
the accounts of Druidism transmitted by the Roman 
historians, to fix the periods at vv^hich they predomin- 
ated. Most probably the different forms of Paganism 
merged gradually one into the other, and in turn were 
slowly absorbed into Christianity. It is strange to find, 
after the lapse of so many centuries, that traces of these 
old religions still remain in the land, in spite of the 
vigorous efforts that were made to obliterate them. In 
early ages, the Church temporised by trying, as far as 
possible, to leaven the Pagan ceremonies with associations 
of the new faith, and in some districts even gave to the 
Baal fires, which it could not prevent, the names of 
the Evangelists, or of saints. Something analogous ap- 
pears to have been done in regard to the holy wells, 
which are generally associated with the Roman Catholic 
mode of worship, but in reality seem to have been 
assimilated by the early Church from the older faith, for 
Adamnan relates that when Columba was staying in the 
province of the Picts, he heard of a fountain famous 
among the heathen people, and which they worshipped as 
God. The specified acts of worship v/ere that they drank 
of it, and afterwards washed their hands and feet, thus 
expecting to be cured of their diseases. Columba saw 
his opportunity, immediately blessed the spring, drank of 
it, washed himself, and from that time his followers 
claimed for Christianity the merits of its healing pov/ers. 
Long afterwards, when the reformed faith began to spread. 



more decided measures were deemed necessary, and the 
Lollards of Kyle protested vigorously, in their own dis- 
trict, against the Baal fires, which even then blazed, on 
the first of May, from every hill-top in Scotland ; while 
from the days of Knox onwards, the General Assemblies 
did their best to suppress the usages still in existence, 
although their origin and significance had ceased to be 
remembered. Yet they might have spared their trouble, 
for, though there is little fear of a national revival of 
Paganism, while our language lasts its memory will not 
be forgotten, and, as w^e shall show, more of its rites 
were preserved than what was implied by the figure- 
heads on our ships, or the libations to the sea-god which 
took place at their launching. Beltan was long the 
appellation of the removal term in Ayrshire, and to fhe 
present day, in some parts of the county, any conflagra- 
tion is spoken of as a " bale fire." Clachan, itself, 
means " the stones," in allusion to the Druidic circles 
and stone altars no doubt, and probably the habit of 
building their homes under the shadow of these holy 
places would have an early origin, while it used to be 
customary for old people in the Highlands of Scotland 
to speak of going to church as "going to the stones." In 
an old translation of the Scriptures the wise men from 
the East figure as "Druids." Sir Walter Scott was for a 
time greatly puzzled over the derivation of a place-name 
in his neighbourhood. He had reasons for supposing 
that " Hexel Cleuch " had some association with 
Druidism, but failed to catch the connecting link. 
It did not seem to possess any meaning in the Scottish 
language, while it was extremely suggestive of the German 
" Hexa," a witch ; but he could scarcely put faith in an 
allusion so far fetched, which was yet no explanation. At 



length, while studying an old Teutonic work, he dis- 
covered that Hexa, in an ancient form of the German 
language, also meant Druidess, and, thus taken in con- 
junction with the names of the rivers in the vicinity, as 
Tweed, Gala, Yarrow, etc., might be regarded as forming 
an additional proof of an implied Gothic racial connection. 

But Tarbolton has done more than perpetuate the 
names which connect it with a far distant past, for, until 
lately, it held annually a very important ceremony of 
Pagan times, although ignorant of its real import. This 
took the form of a cattle fair, and occurred in the middle 
of June — the Summer Solstice. For weeks previously, 
great preparations were made in the Clachan — white- 
washing of houses, mending of broken panes, and general 
renovation of all things. Then on a certain day the 
droves poured in from all directions, encamping on the 
level ground around the mount, now prosaically known as 
Hood's Hill. This eminence is obviously artificial, 
round in shape, as emblematic of the sun, and is raised 
on an irregular shaped stratum of rock, while the ground 
at its base would, no doubt, in ancient times, be bog- 
land for a considerable distance around. This seems to 
have been a general feature of the sites of these holy 
hills throughout the county, which might be selected for 
the better defence of the position in case of need, since 
a causeway could be easily held against an enemy ; or 
perhaps they were also intended as a preservation of the 
sanctity of the locality from the too close advances of the 
people. Faint traces of what may have been fortifica- 
tions are to be seen in the neighbourhood, and a cer- 
tainty of this is found in one outlet from the village 
being styled " the West Port." The day previous to the 



fair the schoolboys of the parish went from house to 
house, demanding contributions to the " banefire," and 
rarely asked in vain — since, if money was not forth- 
coming, any kind of fuel was acceptable, and this was 
piled up on a kind of altar of turf at a certain part of the 
hill just beneath the apex, ready to be lit when the sun 
should have gone down. A picturesque sight is this 
bonfire still, though it is now Tarbolton's sole Hnk with 
its past of Paganism; but what a suggestive scene it 
must have shone upon then, when its red glow fell on 
the tired flocks massed around its base, and lit up the 
crowded streets and roads, and alas ! the accompani- 
ments of sensuality and drunkenness which were inevi- 
table on such occasions. And there were the preparations 
for the business and pleasure of the morrow, the erection 
of the hobby-horses and the merry-go-rounds, and the 
wonderful stalls, whose contents were to feast the eyes 
and the appetites of the bystanders, while the coarse 
cressets flared where more light was needed, dispelling 
the shadows which would have given artistic effect to the 
picture ; and oaths were bandied freely, and the hoarse 
bellowing of the cattle at intervals drowned the minor 
noises. Would it have been strange if imaginative youth, 
descended from the old Covenanting stock, saw in such 
functions an epitome of the " Vanity Fair" of the great 
Puritan, and wondered in what bodily form the pur- 
chaser of souls would mingle with the crowd ? As the 
dusk deepened, the mirth of the boys on the moot-hill 
became more boisterous, and with wild shouts they com- 
menced to leap upon the turf wall surrounding the fire, 
which exercise they kept up till a late hour, thus practis- 
ing what seemed to be a marked feature of the ancient 
Baal worship, and producing an effect weirdly reminiscent 



of the scene on Mount Carmel. Before the night was 
far advanced, the older people of the clachan put in an 
appearance, and walked round the mount in straggling 
procession, once in later times, but tradition says thrice 
in earlier days. Probably the circuit would be performed 
in the direction of the sun's course, but that is now as 
completely forgotten as is the significance of the occa- 
sion celebrated ; for there is no doubt that this and 
various cattle fairs in other parts of the country were 
survivals of a great religious ceremonial. The Glossary 
of Cormac, Prince and Bishop of Cashel — 830 to 903 — 
gives Beltane, i.e., Billtene, lucky fire, as two fires which 
Druids used to make, with great incantations, and to 
which all the cattle in the district were brought once a 
year as a safeguard against disease. Now, Beltane was 
the first of May, and the midsummer festival was held 
to implore a blessing on the expected harvest; so we 
may infer that later on, when Druidism had waned before 
Christianity, the teachers of the new faith seized the 
opportunity of turning these two into one, and, as in 
the case of the holy wells, still blessing, but with a dif- 
ferent formula. If this lasted till the Reformation, of 
course it would then cease, and by degrees merge into an 
ordinary transaction of buying and selling. The advent 
of railways in Ayrshire has done more than the centuries 
to erase this strange survival, and the sale and purchase 
of cattle is now conducted in prosaic fashion at Ayr 
market. 

Tradition still holds that the hill was the seat of 
justice, and this is no doubt correct, for the Druids 
were lawgivers as well as priests, and, in later ages, the 
reverence for its past, and suitability in other ways, 



7 

would recommend it as a moot-hill for the baron of the 
district. But when the villagers indicate the Gallow, or 
Gala hill, an eminence to the south of the mount, as the 
spot where executions took place, they are verj much 
astray indeed. Some have even been known to point 
to a certain spot on which they profess to have seen the 
dule tree before it was cut down. The tree was there, 
no doubt, but got its sinister reputation on account of a 
simple case of suicide. But the place bore its name long 
before the gallows became an instrument for carrying out 
the law, and when the means of death were by water or 
fire, and occasionally by the sacrificial knife. Moreover, 
it may be noted that this designation is always found in 
the neighbourhood of Druidic remains, and is invariably 
gallow^ not gallows^ being derived from the Gaelic, ^^c^? 
Ha — "the sorcery stone" — easily corrupted into 'gallow.' 
It was the spot where the Druid priests sacrificed their 
victims, and, by observation of their death agonies and 
inspection of their vitals, foretold coming events. A 
portion of a paved road leading to it, apparently from the 
Baal hill, is yet plainly visible j but the part nearest to the 
mount cannot be traced, as a new public road was made 
in that direction early in the century, and the farm-house 
of Smithfield also stands across its track. Several such 
roads are in this vicinity, one leading from Smithfield 
straight past what antiquarians consider the Roman 
Camp on Parkmuir, where various traces of fortifications 
are still visible. This may be a branch from the main 
Roman road through Galloway and Ayrshire — at all 
events it has been right of way beyond the memory of 
man. Fifty years ago, the estate of Smithfield had re- 
cently changed hands, and the new proprietor declared 
his intention of closing this road to the public, as it 



8 

passed through his grounds, and close to his residence. 
His proposal met with strong disapproval in the neigh- 
bourhood, as the road led past various farms, and was also 
a favourite walk with the villagers. That it had at one 
time been a much used highway is evident from the fact 
that at Cockhill the ruins of an extensive hostelry still 
remain, which is said to have been also a posting estab- 
lishment. The road does not look suitable for wheeled 
vehicles, but would most likely be one of the old pack- 
horse tracks. Eventually the parishioners, headed by 
Mr. Paterson of Montgomerie and others, took the case 
to court, and gallantly fought it out. The laird of Smith- 
field lost his cause, and it ruined him so completely that 
the estate had to be sold to pay the legal costs. 

Whether these roads were really made by the Romans, , 
or whether the natives, after the departure of the invaders, 
took a lesson from their works, is a question open to dis- 
cussion. If they did follow such an example, it must have 
been to a limited extent, since, as a general rule, roads 
in Scotland, up till the present century, were remarkable 
for anything but excellence. The commissioners on 
agriculture, however, in their report on the Ayrshire of 
over a hundred years back, make favourable mention of 
it in this respect. Those here alluded to are singularly 
like the description of a paved way leading to a Druidic 
circle at Donside, parish of Tullynessle, Aberdeenshire, 
which runs for six hundred yards through a bog, and on 
which the stones are not squared after the Roman 
fashion, but neatly fitted into each other. Authorities 
state, however, that as the Roman roads receded from the 
great mihtary centres, and became mere by-ways for the 
use of the soldiers, delicacy of finish was not so much an 



object as solidity of construction enough to render them 
permanent. This consideration, and the vicinity of the 
-camp and main road, seem enough to indicate their 
origin. 

A quarter of a mile south of the sorcery stone is the 
farmhouse of Alton Burn, whose name perpetuates an> 
other interesting ceremonial. Those who have studied 
the subject are aware that wherever vestiges of Druidism, 
or sun worship, exist, the term " Alton," or something 
synonymous, as Hilton, or Belton, is to be found in the 
neighbourhood. One instance, near at hand, may be 
seen at Crosbie, some three miles from Prestwick, where 
are the remains of stones, with an Alton near at hand. 
AllteinCy stone of fire, from Ail^ a stone, and Teme^ fire, 
has a most interesting significance. These stones, to 
judge from the few specimens which remain, were gene- 
rally about nine or ten feet high, and on their top, in 
those early ages, the sacred flame of Baal, carefully 
tended by the priests, was kept ablaze night and day, for 
its waning or extinguishment by any chance would have 
portended evil to the tribes around. Once a year only 
was that fire suffered to die out, and on that thirtieth day 
of October every hearth in the district was also obliged 
to be cold and dark. Then, at nightfall, the heads of 
families, each carrying an unlit torch, made their way to 
the sacred stone, on which the priests, with many incan- 
tations, called down fire from the Sun god, and the 
torches were lit amid great rejoicing, and homes again 
made glad with warmth and light. These stones have 
now almost all disappeared, though some were in ex- 
istence till quite recently — one, the Allteine^ not " Auld 
toun" of Aberdeen, being in evidence some half mile 



10 

from that city till the beginning of the present century. 
It is to be regretted that some of these memorials of the 
past perished through wanton destruction, but no doubt 
in earlier ages their removal might be a wise measure, if 
their presence preserved the memory of Paganism, and 
hindered the spiritual advancement of the people. 

The Allteine of Tarbolton is not now visible, but there 
is a mound in the neighbourhood of the farm called " the 
Fairy Knowe," which may have been its site, or may 
even cover the stone itself. When Christianity was 
established in the land, places of worship were generally 
erected close to these strongholds of the older faiths, lest 
use and wont might draw the people back to their 
accustomed haunts. At Tarbolton, the present kirk 
probably occupies the site of the most ancient one, and 
is almost within a stone's throw of the hill, while the 
ruins of the little chapel at Crosbie are as close as 
possible to the spot where the Sun rites were cele- 
brated. Whether there was any Christian institution at 
the Alton is not known ; but centuries later Satan was 
challenged there by a foeman well able, through the 
strength of his Master, to drive him from the field. This 
was the celebrated Alexander Peden, who, while acting 
as Session Clerk and precentor at Tarbolton, taught 
school at this place, and possibly also in another part of 
the parish, for we learn by the Presbytery Records of 
1642 that while there was no school held at the Village 
Kirk, according to the ordinary practice, two were in 
existence, which would likely be private ventures. 

When the country had emerged into the light of 
history, and the simplicity of early Christianity developed 



II 

into an elaborate ritual, Tarbolton seems still to have 
retained something of its old importance, and had evi- 
dently acquired a desirable religious endowment, for the 
patronage of its church appears to have been a much- 
coveted possession. In 1335, the then lord of the manor, 
John de Graham, gifted this, along with the lands of 
Unthank, on which the building stood, to his cousin, 
Robert de Graham, who, greatly to the disgust of the 
friars of Fail, whose monastery was but a mile off, and 
who had previously manoeuvred to secure the transfer, 
forthwith handed it over to the monks of Melrose, along 
with part of the land belonging to it, and also several 
acres of Carngillan, Darnhunche, and Altonburn. Per- 
haps this arrangement had not met with approval in high 
quarters, for the patronage was again joined to the 
barony in 1361, when both vrent to the Stewarts of 
Darnley, and the Church being in the diocese of Glasgow, 
the Bishop, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, and 
with the consent of the patron, erected the charge into a 
canonry of the Cathedral there j but the patronage con- 
tinued with the barony of the Stewarts until 1665, when 
a cadet of the Eglinton family, having bought Coilsfield 
from Cunningham of Caprington, seems to have either 
acquired or purchased the right of presentation, which 
remained afterwards in the gift of the Montgomeries. As 
the Stewarts were a branch of the reigning family, and 
Henry, Lord Darnley, married his cousin, Queen Mary, 
Tarbolton has thus associations of civil as well as 
ecclesiastical interest. 

The vicinity of the monastery of Fail must also have 
added to the celebrity of the clachan, it being well 
endowed, and the superior, as head of the provincial 



T2 

order of the Trinity, entitled to a seat in Parliament. 
As " Brethren of the Redemption," the friars had rather a 
notable work on which to expend their energies— that of 
ransoming the captives taken in battle, especially those 
sold into slavery by the Moors. The religious houses 
were the superior hostels of their time, and many 
travellers of condition, as well as the poor and needy, 
would be entertained within those grey walls, which we 
look at with tender reverence, for the sake of one guest, 
who, for a time at least, claimed their shelter — that great 
and true Scot, Thomas the Rhymer. Yet, considering 
the importance of this establishment, it has left but slight 
traces in the place names of the neighbourhood, the 
most noticeable being that of Torcross, still preserved by 
a farm on the hill top some distance from the Monastery. 
This "Hill Cross," may have marked the limit of the 
mile to which the monks were expected to restrict their 
walks, such being generally set up for their guidance at 
the four cardinal points, especially if the building 
possessed the right of sanctuary, or it might simply 
indicate the bounds of the land belonging to the com- 
munity. 

Whether the brethren did their work creditably or not 
we cannot tell; the pranks of the warlock laird, who 
succeeded them, have obliterated any traditions which 
might have been preserved, and their memory is mostly 
perpetuated in doggerel rhymes, 

*' The monks of Fail, they made guid kail 
On Fridays when they fasted, 
And wanted neither beef nor ale 
So long as their neighbours' lasted !" 

But, so far as we know, there is nothing worse recorded 



13 

against them than this attachment to the pleasures of the 
table, and it must be remembered that faults bulk large, 
and virtues small, in near neighbours. 

On the departure of the Friars, at the Reformation, the 
Superior seems to have remained by his charge, as 
happened in many other cases, retaining a portion of the 
inonastic lands, and changing, or pretending to change, 
his religion. After him came a brother of Wallace of 
Craigie, and finally the warlock laird, probably the last 
who resided in the building, as it is said that the roof fell 
in during the great storm which occurred on the day of 
his burial. Previously, there is no record of the building 
having suffered any damage. It is a common accusation 
against the reformers that, during the confusion con- 
sequent on the change of religion, the mobs wrecked 
religious buildings at their instigation, or at least with 
their consent. No thoughtful person who has studied 
the subject could entertain such an idea. In, or near, 
towns, the rascal multitude, the roughs, who, like the 
poor are always with us, and of whom Knox complains 
so bitterly, no doubt did much damage, (there was no 
force to restrain them it will be remembered), and the 
temptation to loot must have been irresistible, but it is 
not likely that in many cases they did more than gut 
these places of all that was valuable — the rest was done 
by time, and the people of the neighbourhood. Standing 
beside the Cathedral of St. Andrews, for example, it is 
surprising to find any one accusing the reformers of the 
destruction so painfully visible, when, by looking around 
they can have plain evidence, both in farm buildings and 
houses in the town, of the abundant use of the quarry 
lying so conveniently to hand. At Glenluce, in Gallo- 



14 

way, the mansion house of Park is wholly built of stones 
from the adjacent Abbey, and, doubtless, all over the 
country the spoliation was the same. Yet, even for that, 
there is a certain excuse, since the troubles, and con- 
sequent poverty, of Scotland had left her in very different 
plight from what she had been some centuries earlier, 
and a struggle for the necessaries of life does not tend to 
sesthetic appreciation ; moreover, the Churches, erected 
for the use of an elaborate ritual, were not suitable to the 
new mode of worship, also, the people no doubt thought 
they had a right to use what they might consider their 
own property, and that after the lairds had helped them- 
selves, there could be no offence in appropriating what 
remained. Had they got the Justice, for which the 
Reformers pleaded, there would have been no need to 
accept privileges. 

It is to be hoped that the lay superiors of Tarbolton, 
the Stewarts, and Grahams, and Cunninghams, were 
moderately lenient in their treatment of their vassals, but 
it is difficult, in modern days, to realise what existence 
must have been to the chattels of men v^^ho had almost 
irresponsible powers over life and death. The assimila- 
tion of French and Scots lav^s and customs, likewise gave 
to the Barons of the latter nation some of those revolting 
rights of the French Seigneury, which are notified even 
in charters granted by Robert the Bruce, and possibly 
existed till a much later date. In Scotland, there was, in 
extreme cases, a right of appeal to the over-lord, but, 
since the vassal could not leave the land without the 
consent of his superior, it may be supposed that in the 
event of such an appeal, v/hatever might be its immediate 
results, the after-ones would not be pleasant. Happy 



15 

were the inhabitants of the royal burghs, for their ruler 
was at a distance, and less likely to be offended at petty 
faults than the dweller in the mansion which dominated 
the hovels of the peasants. Probably the vassals of 
Baronies would appreciate and act upon the saying of the 
unemancipated Russian serfs, " Heaven is far off, the 
Lord near," and find diplomatic submission their only 
course. 

Generally, the Baron made some show of trial, 
however unequal might be his justice, but it was possible, 
on occasion, even to dispense with that, as the over-lord 
might never learn of the incident, or, doing so, could be 
easily appeased. Perhaps the last case of such high- 
handed dealing on record, although many such might 
happen later, which never were chronicled, took place at 
East Kilbride, early in the seventeenth century. The 
superior there was one of the powerful Lindsays, and a 
man of hasty choleric temperament. Being on the ice, 
one day, and a vassal having brought him a message, 
either the news or something in the man's manner had 
displeased him, for he ordered a hole to be at once made 
in the ice, and had the poor fellow drowned. The 
murder made so deep an impression on the people of the 
district that it vfas never forgotten, and that part of the 
loch where it was perpetrated bore the name of the 
victim long after the estate had passed from the possession 
of the baron and his descendants. But what showed 
even more clearly the temper of the times was the fact 
that the baron, v/hile dying, was deeply remorseful for an 
act of private assassination he had once committed, and 
.attributed the reverses, v/hich overtook him, to God's 
xetribution for that crime ; the drov/ning incident he did 



i6 

not seem to think worth a regret — the man was only a 

vassal ! 

It is interesting, by nomenclature, and the echoes of the 
past, to gain hints of the condition of the land in by- 
gone times. The "muirs and mosses many," of Burns' 
song, will always remain in name, even if there should be 
few traces of their original condition. Moss Bog, Moss- 
Blown, Bogside, Bogend, Middle Muir, Barnmuir, all 
testify to a very different state of matters from what is 
now to be met with, and these indications are so numer- 
ous, that it is difficult to imagine where the arable land 
was situated, or how each farm managed to raise its own 
grain supply. Yet, these morasses had done good 
service, as forming friendly shelter and a way of escape, 
when the country was ravaged by the troops of Claver- 
house and Lag, and their smooth, green, treacherous 
surface had lured many a trooper to his doom, and done 
the work so completely that a single bubble on the dark 
water alone told the tale. Other features of the country 
have disappeared as well as the mosses. Lochlea, pro- 
nounced " Lochly," the poet's home in the parish, really 
deserved its name in his day, for a loch, though small in 
comparison with what it would be in the past, still existed 
in close proximity to the house, and when this was 
drained, in the present century, a very complete settle- 
ment of lake dwellers was discovered, of which some 
interesting mementoes are to be seen in the museum at 
Kilmarnock. The existence of this crannog, though in 
comparatively shallow water, had never been suspected, 
and it would probably have been destroyed, without 
notice, but for the culture and intelligence of a gentleman 
in the village, the late James Brown, Esq., who took the 



17 

hint from some remarks he overheard among the work- 
men employed, and wrote to several gentlemen likely to 
be interested in the subject. The supposed island in the 
middle of the loch, was found to be artificial, and having 
a connection with the land. Several canoes, hollowed 
out of the trunks of trees were also found, and an exten- 
sive collection of articles, showing the inhabitants of the 
crannog to have probably been of the bronze and iron 
periods, as we cannot found on the stone implements, 
which were numerous, but appear to have been in use till a 
much later period, since it is related that the English, at 
the battle of Hastings, " seem to have retained some of 
the rudest arms of primitive days, and to have gone to 
battle with the stone hatchets, or stone hammers, which 
are commonly looked on as belonging only to earlier, and 
lower races than our own." The land, here, still requires 
constant efforts of drainage to keep it sweet, and, looking 
at the prosperous condition of this farm, three times the 
size of the Burns' poor, wet, bare leasehold, and, thinking 
of the rude farming implements then in use, and of the 
small amount of scientific knowledge at the disposal of 
the farmer, who could refuse pity for the memory of the 
brave hearts, without capital or help, or even encourage- 
ment from without, struggling so hopelessly and for so 
long. 

The *' Black Neuk," in a corner of the parish, is another 
name which tells its own tale. A coal seam has been 
wrought here, more or less, it is said, for centuries. The 
large village of Annbank only accommodates part of the 
needful workers. It would be a curious study to com- 
pare the conditions of our miners of to-day, with those of 
little more than a hundred years ago. But, indeed, there 



i8 

can be no comparison between our stalwart, well- developed, 
intelligent, and in many cases gifted and accomplished, 
workers of the present, with the badly used, poorly 
nurtured, and ignorant slaves of last century, when the 
colliers and salters went with the land, and were bought 
and sold along with it, and punished if they tried to 
escape and better their condition of life elsewhere. No ! 
the toilers to whom we owe so much — free men, in a free 
land — shall not pass the same heritage as their prede- 
cessors did to their children : the flat feet, and shambling 
gait, and hanging lower lip, begotten of long bondage, 
which may be seen even yet among the descendants of 
those unfortunate men and women, and accepted as the 
hall mark of an oppression that is happily now past for 
ever. Near Annbank, the place is pointed out v/here 
Mr. Cunningham, of Annbank and Enterken, held that 
Fete Chatnpetre which was celebrated by Burns, He was 
married for the second time to a daughter of Mrs. Stewart 
of Stair. 

A designation, grimly reminiscent of the past, is Wolf- 
lett, a high bank on the Water of Ayr, not far from Stair 
Village, and, in this connection, it may be mentioned 
that when the old house of Enterken, near Annbank, was 
taken down, a parchment was found in the wall, which 
proved to be a proclamation, offering a reward for every 
wolfs head which should be brought to the at that 
time proprietor of the estate. 

A word or two may be added regarding the beautiful 
loch which lies outside the village, and which in the days 
of the monks would no doubt be larger and well stocked 
with fish, although now possessed of a quality rather puzzl- 



19 

ing to strangers. A minister, in the neighbourhood, tells 
a story which will best illustrate this. Soon after his 
ordination, and while still strange to the country side, he 
was asked to officiate at Tarbolton. It was a lovely day 
in autumn, and he was so charmed with the landscape, 
and the beauty imparted to it by the water, that he re- 
solved to have a closer inspection of it on the first 
opportunity. This did not occur until early summer, 
v;hen he was invited to take a week-night preparatory 
service, for which he started in good time, pondering his 
discourse by the way, and looking out for his guide, the 
loch. He was interested in his task, but by and by, it 
was borne in on him that the Ayrshire miles must be 
remarkably long. He looked his watch and found that 
by this time he ought to have reached his destination, 
but in what direction did this lie? A village showed 
some distance off, but with no water visible, so he gave it 
a wide berth, and sped on by the opposite way. Still, 
there was no clachan to be seen. In despair, he hailed a 
passing cart, "Aye, yon's Tarbolton," said the driver, 
pointing to the houses which the minister had avoided. 
"But I don't see the loch," he queried, still doubtful 
The answer was indistinct, for the cart had rumbled on, 
so he retraced his steps as quickly as clerical etiquette 
allowed. At length he recognised by certain land-marks 
that it was the village of his search, but there was certainly 
no loch near it. He was late, of course, but so welcome 
that this was forgiven, yet, in the intervals of his duty, the 
good man's mind was sorely exercised as to whether he 
had been the victim of hallucination, or was, indeed, 
seeing he was in Kyle, really and truly bewitched. At 
the end of the service, with some anxiety, he sought 
a possible explanation. " Missed the loch ? " was the 



20 



answer, " Oh, aye, to be sure, but you needn't look for 
the loch in Summer, you know, it's always drained for 
the hay crops ! " So much for a utilitarian age ! 




THE 
VILLAGE. 

f^^T is rather singular that Tarbolton, having had such 
important religious establishments, should have 
failed to secure at least some portion of civil rights 
through their influence, either by the aid of the powerful 
Stewarts and Grahams, or, later, when these ceased to 
have connections with the place, the Cunninghams and 
Montgomeries, whose interests would have been served 
by the advancement of the Clachan. Possibly rivalry 
may have induced jealousy and thus retarded Tarbolton's 
progress, for, in 1672, when a charter was actually drawn 
out constituting it a Burgh of Barony, with Cunningham 
of Enterken as superior, the document never obtained the 
king's signature. It would be interesting to know what 
pressure was brought to bear against it at court — in those 
days of Charles the Second, when back-stairs intrigues 
ruled the land — strong enough to debar Cunningham from 
his undoubted right, since the village proper stood on 
his ground, and he was also the most extensive proprietor. 
These two families did not altogether divide the parish, 
however, it being a fair example of matters in earlier 
times, when the great landholders were in the habit 
of giving grants to their vassals, sometimes for services 
rendered, and also to ensure their help in future need. 
These, in turn, often divided it among their families, and 
the names of many of these " portioners," as they are 
styled, figure in last century's ecclesiastical records, and 



22 

the term still exists in the village. Some of those lands 
which have not been divided are quite respectable little 
properties, as " The Bennels," " Smithfield," and the Hke. 
Of the feus, many are blench holdings, that is held at 
merely nominal rates, such as one penny a poll. The 
last house of the original village, built on land feued from 
Enterken estate, and now the Post Office, has something 
curiously suggestive in the tenure of its holding. The 
feu duty is one penny yearly, but only to be paid on the 
condition that the receiver calls for it in a coach and 
pair ! Surely some odd story underlies this condition. 

Whether the village ever possessed a Cross or not is 
uncertain, but most likely it did, for an open space in its 
centre is dignified by this appellation, and a building 
there, which was formerly an inn, had as its sign, "The 
Cross Keys." The aristocratic quarter seems to have 
been in the direction of the West Port, the houses here 
being mostly of two stories, and substantially built. 
They are plain, and uniform in front, as professing 
themselves of the Georgian era, but their back parts 
bewray them, and would indicate, at least in part, a 
seventeenth century origin. Possibly some of these 
might originally have been dower houses to the small 
estates of the neighbourhood, and where one lady was 
located others would follow for the sake of congenial 
company, so that, limited as was the area, there would 
be no lack of " society " in the Tarbolton of earlier days. 
One of the dwellings possesses a special interest, in having 
been the house of John Wilson, the schoolmaster and 
session-clerk of the parish, who gained a notoriety he 
neither wished for nor deserved as " Dr. Hornbook." It 
is a two-storied thatohed house, next to the Crown Inn, 



and in convenient proximity to his school, which was 
then in the graveyard directly opposite. In the lower 
story of the building he kept a miscellaneous assortment 
of articles for sale, thus gaining a slight addition to his 
income, his salary as schoolmaster being only some fifty 
pounds a year, and such few emoluments as fell to him 
through his clerkship to the Session. At this time there 
was neither doctor nor druggist in Tarbolton, and, an 
epidemic of fever having broken out, Mr Wilson supplied 
a felt want by dispensing some simple medicines, and, 
having taken the trouble to study their properties and 
effects, he was ever ready to give his humble neighbours 
the benefit of his knowledge, for which, it may be said, 
they were very grateful, and his memory is kindly spoken 
of to the present day, for he seems to have been warm- 
hearted, though fussy, and, perhaps, opinionative in 
manner. 

Passing into Burn Street, we find some houses, worthy 
of notice, chiefly the one-storied cottage on the right 
hand before turning on to the hill, for, in a room attached 
to it, the Freemasons held their meetings, and here Burns 
was initiated into the mysteries of the craft. It is now 
in a state of dilapidation, and, if not speedily repaired, 
will fall to pieces, through neglect and natural deca5^ 
Of the house directly opposite this, there is also something 
to be told. Students of Burns literature will remember 
that episode in the story of his loves, his courtship of 
Tibbie Steen. This was no vagrant, wandering fancy, 
but evidently undertaken with a serious view to matri- 
mony. He supposed himself to be progressing in his 
suit, until Miss Steen became the recipient of a legacy, 
when her lover began to fear that this, added to her 



24 

attractions, would make her no fitting mate for a struggling 
peasant farmer. The girl had evidently indulged herself 
in some of the little coquetries incidental to her position, 
and which, before the advent of the money, Burns would 
likely have found rather piquant than otherwise. As 
yet, he had no idea of a rival. One night, however, on 
going to the house, he was told at the door that Tibbie 
was entertaining another admirer. He turned on his 
heel at once, and never went back again. She married, 
afterwards, to her own and her friends' satisfaction, and 
Burns vented his chagrin by writing " Oh Tibbie, I hae 
seen the day." But Tibbie lived to see the day when 
she was proud to acknowledge that she had once poss- 
essed his affections, and to tell her grandson, when he 
recited this very song, that she was herself the heroine of 
it. The legacy, which may be said to have lost Tibbie a 
distinguished husband, and probably made a turning-point 
in the life of the poet, was seventy-five pounds. "Seventy- 
five pounds, and my grandfather built the house we're 
sittin' in wi't," said Tibbie's grandson to the present 
writer. The house referred to is a substantial cottage, 
with attics, in excellent preservation, and a good specimen 
of last century cottage architecture. On the same side as 
this, and nearer the Cross, though still in Burn street, there 
stood, till well on in the century, an old smithy, which 
had a certain interest attaching to it, though of a later date 
than that of our national poet. At four o'clock, one 
bright summer's morning, in the terrible Radical year of 
the nineteen, a detachment of cavalry, from the barracks 
at Ayr, rode clattering down the quiet village, and, dis- 
mounting at the Cross, began their work of searching for 
suspected men. Very precise information they had as to 
names and localities, and they spared no pains in their 



work, even thrusting their long sabres through feather 
and chaff beds, so that it was no fault of theirs that not 
a single patriot was arrested. Yet there were few in the 
village who did not know of the night drillings in the 
fields, and that the bullets for the intended rising had 
been cast in this same smithy. No doubt, there was 
much trepidation in various homes, for fear of a discovery 
which might have cost the smith and many others, not 
only their liberty, but their lives. Long after, a woman, 
in the adjoining house, found a bag full of bullets, 
on the top of a high old cupboard, in her kitchen, 
and, in some consternation, asked a neighbour's advice 
regarding the dangerous commodity. Their joint wisdom 
decided on burying them in the garden, and there 
they most likely remain till this day. A curious feature 
in connection with the Chartist agitation in Tarbolton, 
was the fact that it was not, as was commonly the case 
in other localities, and as might have been expected from 
their general sentiments, the men of sedentary occupa- 
tions, who were in the majority, but the artisans and farm 
workers in the neighbourhood. 

There is one house in the village, which it is pleasant 
to be able to rescue from the oblivion fast closing over it. 
This is the old manse of the Parish, fronting to the Cross, 
and standing at the corner of Sandgate and Burn Streets. 
Though only disused by its clerical tenants at the 
end of last century, there seems now to be but one person 
in the neighborhood able to identify it. It is a solidly 
built two story erection, probably not less than two 
hundred years old, for the date, 1774, in front can only 
refer to one of the many repairs which it received during 
the incumbency of Dr. Wodrow. No doubt it would be 



20 

considered a handsome building for a country manse at 
that period, and is a fair specimen of the very simple accom- 
modation provided for the ministers of the time, such, be it 
remembered, mostly men of culture and good family, as 
Guthrie, who was the son of a Forfarshire laird. We read 
of a dining room, parlour, nursery, and bedroom! as well 
as of the kitchen and other adjuncts of which traces are still 
noticeable, and the building itself bears witness to this 
being all that seemed to be required for family comfort by 
a minister, even at the close of the eighteenth century, for, 
with all the debates concerning repairs and outside 
additions, nothing was ever said regarding enlargement 
of the household premises. 

It is possible that this might be the first manse built 
for the charge, since it is only in 1576 that we learn of a 
regular preacher, one John Nisbet, being appointed, there 
being previously only a reader, David Curll. The stipend 
was then ^£1$$ 6s. 8d. Scots, with the Kirk land of 
the parish. But the manse might not be erected till later, 
and there seems to have been an excambion, or some other 
arrangement, as the building is not on Glebe land. A faint 
echo in the clachan still tells of the minister who left his 
charge in Covenanting times and returned no more ; and 
it may have been from this very house that John Guthrie 
departed in 1660, with a sad enough heart, doubtless, 
though for conscience sake. It was during his ministry 
here that Alexander Peden acted as schoolmaster, pre- 
centor, and session clerk to the parish, but, unfortunately, 
the early ecclesiastical records of Tarbolton have not been 
preserved. We next learn that Guthrie preached at 
Lanark in November, 1666, to the party who afterwards 
suffered so disastrous a defeat at Pentland. After sermon, 



27 

he tendered his hearers a renewal of the Covenants, which 
they took with great solemnity and with hands upraised ta 
heaven. Two years afterwards he died, no doubt as much 
a martyr as his brethren who perished on the field or the 
scaffold. But the connection of this family with the 
parish did not end here, for the Rev. Dr. Wodrow, the 
last clerical inhabitant of the manse, was the son of a 
grand-daughter of William Guthrie of Fenwick, and was 
thus great-grand-nephew of John of Tarbolton. 

In the latter half of last century, the manse had become 
very much dilapidated, and calls for repair were frequent, 
evidently not much to the content of the heritors, 
who did not attend the meetings of Presbytery very 
well, although such were held in Tarbolton, presumably 
for their convenience. Dissent had made great way 
in the parish, and, if a proportion of the portioners were 
Associate Seceders, there might be a reason for some 
bitterness on their part, since they had been refused a 
site for their meeting house, in 1777, and the neighbouring 
gentry had not shown themselves favourable to liberty of 
conscience, so far as public worship went. The site was 
obtained through humbler instrumentality, however, and 
the little kirk throve none the worse, perhaps, for the 
stimulus of opposition. In October, 1782, a meeting 
of Presbytery was held at Tarbolton, in order to discuss, 
with the heritors, a report regarding a needed renovation 
of the manse, and, this being agreed to, other meetings, 
for the receiving of estimates, and so forth, were necessi- 
tated. The heritors, named as being present, were John 
Gray, William Hood, Bogside, A. Dempster, and James 
Manson — the two last, portioners — while Montgom- 
erie of Coilsfield sent v/ord that he was willing to concur; 



28 

and John Wilson, who was present as session clerk, was 
appointed to collect from the heritors, the sum of ^30 
14s., and was to receive, for his trouble, the sum of one 
guinea. The contractors for the work were William 
Junkin, mason and thatcher; James Smith, mason and 
Wright j and John Richard, wright and glazier. The repairs 
were to be on rather an extensive scale, and, could the 
heritors have foreseen that they were within so short a 
distance of a call for a new erection, they might not have 
responded so readily on the present occasion. We find 
the building of a brewhouse and barn among the require- 
ments, but this would probably mean rebuilding, as such 
necessaries must surely have been in existence previously, 
since the minister, according to custom, would certainly 
farm his glebe, and a brewhouse was indispensable in 
days when all families of the better class brewed their 
own ale. The kitchen was to be newly flagged, and the 
chimney heads of it and the laigh room to be raised, 
with a view to cure smoke. This, it may be observed, 
must have been most effectually done, since it was re- 
marked during another, and recent, repair of the solid 
old building, that the chimneys gave no trouble in that 
respect, although they had not been swept for thirty years. 
Also, the trance [passage] was to be reflagged, and some 
provision made for lighting the same, which was too dark 
for comfort. 

Regarding the old Scots term of " trance," with its 
double meaning, an anecdote may not be out of place 
here, as it illustrates the courtly manners and tact of a 
portion of our last century's clergy. It refers to a minister 
of the neighbourhood. Dr. David Shaw, of Coylton — a 
village, some six miles from Tarbolton — and a rather 



29 

remarkable man in some respects. At the age of ninety- 
one, he could read without glasses, wrote a neat small 
hand, and had not a wrinkle on his face. He was mod- 
erator of the General Assembly in 1775, ^^d is referred to 
by Burns as being of the " New Licht party." On one 
occasion, while staying overnight at the house of a noble- 
man, an alarm of fire was raised some time after the 
family had retired. Of course, none stood upon the 
order of their going, but, rushing into the corridor, for- 
gathered in the very slightest of attire. The Doctor, 
having been in close contact with a lady of rank, who 
had been specially noticeable in that respect, was asked 
by a lady, at the breakfast table next morning, what he 
thought when he met the countess in the lobby. "Think, 
my lady," answered the ready Doctor, " how could I 
possibly thinks I was in a trance ! " The prudence, as 
well as wit, of this reply will be appreciated if it is rem- 
embered that the aristocracy of that time, though their 
manners and talk would not now be counted very refined, 
had yet a certain delicacy, which deprecated their private 
affairs being discussed out of their own circle. So strong 
was this feeling, that a fashionable doctor, in the early 
years of the present century, lost all his patients on 
account of simply remarking that a titled lady, whom he 
had attended, made the most beautiful corpse he had 
ever seen. The remark was repeated, resented, and 
eventually ruined him. 

At one of these meetings, an incident occurred which 
must have been judiciously handled and its echoes sa 
carefully hushed that none have ever reached the outside 
world, for its records are only to be found in the curt 
notes of the clerk of Presbytery. Mr. John Wilson seems 



30 

to have taken exception to something in the speech and 
behaviour of Dr. Wodrow, and wrote regarding the same 
to Montgomerie of Coilsfield, who had been absent from 
the meeting. The latter, on receipt of the letter, handed 
it to the Doctor, who thereupon was neither " to baud 
nor to bind," and, besides complaining to the fathers and 
brethren, seems to have made it pretty hot for the writer. 
A special meeting had, therefore, to be convened at 
Tarbolton, at which complaints were heard, and, 
apparently, even-handed justice administered, for the 
gentlemen were each rebuked separately, and then brought 
together before the meeting, where they gave satisfaction 
that they would not again so offend in future. 

It is not possible, however, that the bitterness arising from 
such an encounter could beforgotten, if professedly forgiven. 
The matter could not have been kept altogether secret 
from friends on both sides, and, though each of the parties 
bulked largely in his own sphere, there is no doubt that 
the minister would have the best of it. The divinity which 
hedged the civil power was limited compared to the halo 
which encircled the ecclesiastical in by-past days. The 
old saying tells its ov/n tale, " Ministers are ill craws tae 
shoot at," and to be at odds with the spiritual head of the 
parish in which one resided, must have been as difficult as, 
in old times, to "live in Rome and fight with the Pope." 
Take the instance of Mr. Murdoch, teacher of English in 
the Academy at Ayr, a talented and worthy man, who, 
for the sake of a few words reflecting on Dr. Dalrymple 
the parish minister there, was ousted from his situation by 
the Town Council, and, by sheer force of public opinion, 
obliged to leave the neighbourhood. Only one class of 
parishioners could afford to quarrel with the minister, 



3^ 

namely, the heritors, and, when the strife was mutual, then 
it was a war of the Titans. An anecdote of one such 
difference, occurring in a northern district, is characteristic. 
The dispute was regarding teinds, and the heritor sent 
his portion by a person whose appearance was not un- 
familiar to the minister, who signified as much, and asked 
the name of his visitor. " I am," answered the messenger, 
*' the hangman of Stirling, sir." " Oh, quite so," returned 
the other, " then kindly wait till I write you a receipt," 
which he did after this fashion : — " Received from 
Mr. — — , by the hands of the hangman of Stirling, his 

doer, the sum of etc. ." The term doer at that time, 

and long after, indicated the law agent or man of business 
of any party. In this case the minister certainly scored. 

But the civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries generally took 
care to avoid such diiferences, if possible, being dependent 
on each other for society, and so much thrown together 
that disagreement would have seriously affected their com- 
fort in times when there was a broad division of people 
into two classes, one comprising the nobility, gentry, and 
professions, the other all the rest of mankind. Dr. 
Hornbook would thus have to face, not only the disa- 
proval of the upper section, but also the divided feelings 
of the rest of the population, and from this disagreeable 
position no doubt rose the necessity that he should leave 
the parish. There are hints of unpleasantness in dealing 
with the heritors in regard to his salary, subsequent to 
this, which may have been incidental to the situation, but 
the current idea that he left on account of the clever, 
though coarse, satire of Burns is most unlikely, for he had 
no doubt enough of the Rabelaisian humour of the age 
and country to appreciate the rough wit of the verses, and 



32 

knew, besides, that he stood too high in the opinion of 
the villagers to suffer from their sense of the ludicrous. 
Had he left this parish on that account he would scarcely 
have taken eight years to make up his mind on the 
subject. Indeed, he mentioned the matter himself to 
Gilbert Burns, professing to have been " rather amused," 
by the composition. But the bulk of the people, knowing 
little of the cause of disagreement between their minister 
and session clerk, would incline to hide, from outsiders, 
any of its results of which they might be cognisant, and, 
by laying the blame of the departure of the latter at the 
door of the poet, would thus show the habitual caution 
of narrow communities, and, at the same time, be able to 
add another offence to the cairn already piled so high 
against the luckless bard. The last entry in the session 
books, signed by Wilson, occurs in the opening of 1793, 
and, presumably, he left immediately after. Dr. Wodrow 
died in the April following. 

The old Manse and the old Minister had suited each 
other well, but the Doctor was the last cleric whom its 
roof sheltered, for Mr. Ritchie, who was presented in 
1794, does not seem to have occupied it, and, in 1796, 
the present building was begun, and formally declared 
by the Presbytery to be open, and a free Manse, the 
year following. The stones, we learn, were from Deacon 
Bank, and the wright and glazier work was undertaken 
by John Richard. If Mr. Ritchie chose the site, his 
taste was certainly good, and substantial and even hand- 
some as is the building, its cost was only six hundred 
and thirty-one pounds. 

The old Church, possibly dating from a very early 



33 

era was taken down, and the present commodious edifice, 
whose graceful spire is such a picturesque feature in the 
landscape, erected in 182 1. As the new building is not 
on the site of the old, it is a pity the latter was not pre- 
served, for the sake of its associations, and for the 
benefit of archaeological ^studies, for which so few 
opportunities remain in Scotland. It might even have 
been spared for its appearance, since, covered with ivy, it 
would have been a graceful and interesting adjunct to 
the newer structure. 



Turning the corner of the manse, into the Sandgate, 
there is to be seen on the right hand side, and just above 
the corner building, the house which, in 1780, was 
that of John Richard, and, in the top flat there, in the 
year mentioned. Burns commenced the " Bachelors' 
Club," and remained its moving spirit during his 
residence in, and indeed for some time after leaving 
the Parish. The rules and regulations of this society, 
as well as the preamble to the same, were of his compos- 
ition, and, on this account, interesting, if also a little 
amusing. The members were originally from the 
country round, mostly farmers' sons. Burns being 
of opinion that such were "more agreeable in their 
manners, more virtuous in their conduct, and more sus- 
ceptible of improvement than the self-sufficient mechanics 
of county towns." In 1782, a book was purchased, in 
which to record their proceedings, and a few extracts 
from this may be permissible here. 



" History of the Rise, proceedings, and regulations of 
the Bachelors' Club. 



C2 



34 

• Of birth or blood we do not boast, 
Nor gentry does our Club afford, 
But ploughmen and mechanics we, 
In Nature's simple dress, record.' 

"As the great end of human society is to become wiser 
and better, this ought, therefore, to be the principal view 
of every man, in every station of life. But, as experience 
has taught us that such studies as inform the head, and 
mend the heart, when long continued, are apt to exhaust 
the faculties of the mind, it has been found proper to 
relieve and unbend the mind, by some employment or 
another, that may be agreeable enough to keep its powers 
in exercise, but, at the same time, not so serious as to 
exhaust them. But, superadded to this, by far the 
greater part of mankind are under the necessity of earning 
the sustenance of human life by the labour of their 
bodies, whereby not only the faculties of the mind, but 
the nerves and sinews of the body, are so fatigued that 
it is absolutely necessary to have recourse to some 
amusement or diversion, to relieve the wearied man, 
worn down with the necessary labours of life. 

"As the best of things, however, have been perverted to 
the worst of purposes, so, under the pretence of amuse- 
ment and diversion, men have plunged into all the madness 
of riot and dissipation ; and, instead of attending to the 
grand design of human life, they have begun with extrav- 
agance and folly, and ended with guilt and wretchedness. 
Impressed with these considerations, we, the follow- 
ing lads, in the parish of Tarbolton, viz : — Hugh 
Reid, Robert Burns, Gilbert Burns, Alexander Brown, 
Walter Mitchell, Thomas Wright, and William M 'Gavin, 
resolved, for our mutual entertainment, to unite ourselves 



35 

into a club, or society, under such rules and regulations 
that, while we should forget our cares and labours, 
in mirth and diversion, we might not transgress the 
bounds of innocence and decorum, and, after agreeing 
on these and some other regulations, we held our first 
meeting at Tarbolton,upon the evening of the nth of Nov- 
ber, 1 780, commonly called Hallowe'en, and, after choosing 
Robert Burns president for the night, we proceeded to 
debate on this question : — * Suppose a young man, bred a 
farmer, but without any fortune, has it in his power to 
marry either of two women, the one a girl of large 
fortune, but neither handsome in person, nor agreeable in 
conversation, but who can manage the household affairs 
of a farm, well enough ; the other of them, a girl every 
way agreeable in person, conversation and behaviour, 
but without any fortune, which of them shall he choose ? ' 

" Finding ourselves very happy in our society, we 
resolved to continue to meet once a month in the same 
house, in the way and manner proposed, and shortly 
thereafter we chose Robert Ritchie for another member. 
In May, 1781, we brought in David Sillar, and, in June, 
Adam Jamieson, for members. About the beginning of 
the year 1782, we admitted Matthew Paterson and John 
Orr, and in, June following, we chose James Paterson as 
a proper brother for such a Society. The Club being 
thus increased, we resolved to meet at Tarbolton on the 
race night, the July following, and have a dance in 
honour of our Society. Accordingly we did meet, each 
one with a partner, and spent the evening in such inno- 
cence and merriment, such cheerfulness and good humour, 
that every brother will long remember it with pleasure 
and delight." 



36 

Rules and regulations to be observed in the Bachelors' 
Club: 

First. — The Club shall meet at Tarboltcn every fourth Monday 
night, when a question on any subject shall be proposed, 
disputed points of religion only excepted, in the manner 
hereafter directed, which question is to be debated in 
the club, each member taking whatever side he thinks 
proper. 

Second. — When the Club is met, the president, or he failing 
some one of the members till he comes, shall take his 
seat, then the other members shall seat themselves ; 
those who are for one side of the question on the presi- 
dent's right hand, and those who are for the other side 
on his left hand— which of them shall have the right 
hand is to be determined by the president. The 
president and four of the members being present shall 
have powers to transact any ordinary part of the 
Society's business. 

Third. — The club met and seated, the president shall read the 
question out of the club's book of records, (which book 
is always to be kept by the president), then the two 
members nearest the president shall cast lots who of 
them shall speak first, and, according as the lot shall 
determine, the member nearest the president on that 
side shall deliver his opinions, and the member nearest 
on the other shall reply to him, then the second member 
of the side that spoke first, then the second member of 
the side that spoke second, and so on to the end of the 
company ; but if there be fewer members on the one side 
than on the other, when all the members of the least 
side have spoken according to their places, any of them, 
as they please among themselves, may reply to the re- 
maining members of the opposite side ; when both sides 
have spoken, the president shall give his opinion, after 
which, they may go over it a second or more times, and 
so continue the question, 



37 

Fourth. — The club shall then proceed to the choice of a 
question for the subject of next night's meeting. The 
president shall first propose one, and any other member 
who chooses may propose more questions; and what- 
ever one of them is most agreeable to the majority of 
members shall be the subject of debate next club night. 



Fifth.— The club shall lastly elect a new president for the 
next meeting ; the president shall first name one, then 
any of the club may name another, and whoever of 
them has the majority of votes shall be duly elected, 
allowing the president the first vote, and the casting 
vote upon a par, but none other. Then, afttr a general 
toast to the mistresses of the clubt they shall dismiss. 



Sixth. — There shall he no private conversation carried on 
during the time of debate^ nor shall any member interrupt 
another while he is speaking, under the penalty of a rep- 
rimand from the president, for the first fault ; doubling 
his share of the reckoning, for the second ; trebling it for 
the third; and so on in proportion, for every other fault, 
provided always, however, that any member may speak 
at any time after leave asked and given by the president. 
All swearing and profane language^ and, particularly, all 
obscene and indecent conversation is strictly prohibited, 
under the same penalty as aforesaid in the first clause 
of this article. 



Seventh. — No member, on any pretence whatever, shall 
mention any of the club's affairs to any person but a 
brother member, under the pain of being excluded, and 
particularly if any member shall reveal any of the speeches 
or affairs of the club, with a view to ridicule or laugh at 
any of the members, he shall be for ever excommunicated 
from the, society, and the rest of the members are desired, 
as far as possible, to avoid, and have no communication 
with him as a friend or comrade. 



38 

Eighth. — Every member shall attend at the meetings, without 
he can give a proper excuse for not attending, and it is 
desired that every one who cannot attend, will send his 
excuse with some other member ; and he who shall be 
absent three meetings, without sending such excuse, 
shall be summoned to the club night, when, if he fail to 
appear, or send an excuse, he shall be excluded. 

Ninth. — The club shall not consist of more than sixteen 
members, all bachelors, belonging to the parish of Tar- 
bolton, except a brother member marry, and in that 
case he may be continued, if the majority of the club 
think proper. No person shall be admitted a member 
of this society, without the unanimous consent of the 
club ; and any member may withdraw from the club 
altogether, by giving a notice to the president, in 
writing, of his departure. 

Tenth. — Every man, proper for a member of this society, must 
have afrank^ honest, open heart; above anything dirty or 
mean ; and must be a j)rof6Ssed lover of one or more oj 
the female sex. No haughty, self -conceited person^ who 
looTcs upon himself as superior to the rest of the club, 
and, especially, no mean-spirited, worldly mortal, whose 
only will is to heap up money, shall, upon any pretence 
whatever, be admitted. In short, the proper person for 
this society, is a cheerfid, honest-hearted lad, ivho, if he 
has a friend that is true, and a mistress that is kind, and 
as much wealth as genteelly to mahe both $nds meet, is just 
as happy as this ivorld can make him ! 



Some of the clauses in the above are strongly char- 
acteristic of the Author, and indicative of the times he 
lived in, and the manners of the people. The preamble 
mentions the club as meeting once a month, but this 
seems to have been changed to once a week, and it was 
understood that the sum to be expended nightly, on 



39 

liquor, by each member, was not to exceed threepence, and, 
with this, at the close of the debate, each was to toast his 
mistress. The fines, if such fell due, were also to be so ex- 
pended, and this was, no doubt, conformable to the custom 
of the times, which forbad any charge by the host for accom- 
modation, or even for the concomitants to the liquors, 
such as bread and cheese, or the like, his payment being 
only the profit on the drink consumed, and this led to 
more prolonged drinking than might otherwise have been 
the case, as it became a point of honour to call for as 
much as possible, "for the good of the house." The 
surnames of most of the original members of the club are 
still to be met with in the parish, as Reid, Wright, 
Paterson, Orr, and also a descendant of the then owner 
of the house, bearing the same Christian and surname. 

The impetus given at its start, and the stimulus of 
Burns' enthusiasm, carried on the club for several years, 
after its originator had left Ayrshire ; but at length the 
dissensions, which the rules had been so carefully framed 
to prevent, began to appear, and finally broke up the 
meetings, and, in the consequent confusion, the books, 
regarding past proceedings, were, with the exception of 
what has been alluded to, unfortunately burned. The 
association has lately been resuscitated, however, and, by 
the name of the Literary Society, now flourishes under 
the fostering care of the able president and his assistants, 
who do their best to keep up the prestige of its early 
glories. 

A short distance past the post office, on the opposite 
side of that country road, known as Montgomerie Street, 
although we fancy the formal designation incongruous, is 



40 

an arched passage leading to an enclosure, where are to 
be seen the ruins of various small houses. Here stood 
the smithy patronised by Burns, which we are told was 
wont to be packed to the door by an eager crowd, when 
occasion called him thither, some of these only anxious 
to have a laugh at the humour of " Rabble's last," but 
others able to appreciate that wonderful conversational 
power, which, later on, enthralled the great, and the 
learned, and the beautiful of the Capital. Long after the 
poet's day, a certain interest still attached to the vicinity, 
and the archway became a " stance " for the men of the 
village, when the weather did not permit of politics and 
the affairs of the country-side being discussed at the 
bridge near the Cross. After a time, it became known as 
Parliament Close, and the distinctive titles of the senators 
are still remembered, as "Purple Top," "His Neckship," 
and the like; but the echoes of their wit and their wisdom 
are too faint to be chronicled, though it is pleasant to 
note their efforts to keep up the traditions of Tarbolton's 
golden age. 

There is no need to indicate the situation of the 
Masonic Hall, which is entirely modern, and known to 
all in the clachan as the place where the relics of Burns' 
connection with the Order are preserved. Further on, 
the highway crosses the Gala Hill road, which remains 
much as it would be in the days of the pack horse traffic, 
and before the introduction of wheeled vehicles, when, as 
traversing a considerable portion of the shire, it would be 
a busy thoroughfare. Now, except in the eyes of the 
antiquarian, its glory has departed, and, after passing the 
United Presbyterian and Free Churches, its traces are 
lost, so far as Tarbolton is concerned. Still higher up. 



41 

on the right hand side, above the entrance to the school, 
and next to the house of the Ayr and Kilmarnock carrier, 
is a small two-story cottage, unhappily, modernised, and 
perhaps partly re-built, which was the home of that 
Saunders Tait, tailor and poet, a copy of whose volume 
of verses, published in 1796, has lately been unearthed, 
and is interesting for its glimpses of e very-day village life, 
and for the vigorous, though spiteful, reprisals he makes 
for one of these satiric hits which Burns, alas ! scattered 
only too lavishly for his future peace. The dwelling- 
house of the tailor was on the low flat, and the attic room 
his workshop. There is probably now only one person 
living who could have supplied this information. 

On the opposite side, a little higher up, is James Street, 
which we best love to think of as "Snail Row," for, 
though it is not now a beautiful locality, the latter desig- 
nation is reminiscent of times when it was a shaded 
country lane, leading to primrose-decked banks and 
solitary woodlands, of which there is now little trace. 
Towards the centre of the row, is one of the links which 
connect Tarbolton with the outside world, for a substan- 
tial two-storied house, now divided into smaller tenements, 
but noticeable as having larger windows than the others, 
was the residence of the family of whom Thom the engin- 
eer was a member, whose brilliant feat in bringing the 
water from the Muirlands above Greenock, by a cut 
along the face of the hills, and so to the town, makes his 
name worthy of honourable mention. 

A building which Burns would see in its early fresh- 
ness is the manse built for the minister of the first 
Secession charge in the village, which stands in the 



42 

modest seclusion of what is termed the Back Street, and 
was probably the first built of a row of houses facing the 
open country to the east. Of its tenant at that period^ 
not much record has been preserved, but his successor 
has left a fragrant memory behind him, and hearing the 
annals of his noble and simple hfe from the lips of one 
who was at once a domestic in the family and a 
trusted and valued friend, is like a glimpse into the 
household of some of the early Puritan or Covenanting 
worthies, or a reading from the pages of the Vicar of 
Wakefield. The stipend of Mr Campbell did not exceed 
one hundred pounds a year, on which sum there were 
many claims besides those of providing for his family^ 
Even Communion Seasons must have involved a con- 
siderable degree of expenditure in times when there were 
various services during the week preceding its cele- 
bration, and, on Sabbath, the several tables had to be 
served by separate preachers. A horse had to be kept 
also, for the congregation was large and scattered, and 
there were more calls on the hospitality of the manse 
than the services of the Sanctuary, since the poor of the 
different congregations were provided for by church 
collections, and all complaints and wants were attended 
to by the minister. The ties of relationship had to be 
acknowledged also, in the way of visiting and receiving 
visitors, for the family were in touch with a wider circle 
than was bounded by a country parish, having a con- 
nection with the noble English family of the Nightingales^ 
through the marriage of Mrs Campbell's brother, an 
officer in the army, with an aunt of that lady whose 
name is a household word to many nations, and she and 
her daughter were frequent guests in the Scottish manse 
when occasion served. It was well that economy was 



43 

studied as an art by Scotswomen of that era, but withal 
it would have been difificult for the minister to make 
both ends meet, had not his people supplied the de- 
ficiencies by their benefactions. At the present day, 
it savours too much of dependence to learn of the good 
man trusting to these contributions to eke out his scanty 
income, but it must be borne in mind that current coin 
of the realm was not always plentiful in country parts, 
and payments in kind were convenient. The same method 
prevailed in the Established Church, the difference 
being that in the latter their value and amount were 
fixed by law, and in the former they were voluntary gifts. 
The minister's wife and daughters did their best to be 
helps and not encumbrances to the head of the house- 
hold by their work at the fine embroidery which was then 
a well-paid industry in Ayrshire, and all were perfectly 
content and happy in their little round of duties, whether 
sewing by the window in summer, or gathered round the 
lamp in the long winter nights, with Margaret, (who also 
excelled in needlework), in from the kitchen, and the 
minister reading aloud from some instructive and pleasant 
book. The solitary survivor of the group still loves to 
recite how happy they were. 

Good Mr. Campbell was not so much concerned about 
his narrow means, as troubled regarding the backsliding 
of the rising generation, who had taken to walking over 
the Gala Hill on Sabbaths, though full in sight of his 
study windows. He would have gone out to harangue 
each group as it passed, but, as his family felt sure this 
would be of no avail, they were firm in opposing his 
wishes, and looked upon Mr. Pitt's window tax as a 
benefaction when it gave them an excuse for excluding 



44 

the light of Heaven from one side of the study, which 
they took care should be that which commanded the 
Sabbath promenade. 

The minister outlived both wife and children, but bore 
his grief as a Christian should, and in the loneliness of 
his closing days testified to the goodness which had 
followed him through life, and gave him assurance of 
re-union with those whom he loved and had lost for a 
time. 

Any reference to the past of the village would be in- 
complete without allusion to the inns, which were so 
essential to the comfort of the community in times when 
journeys could only be performed in coaches, on horse- 
back, or on foot, and when the traveller might be detained 
for days on the road. Of the smaller class, change 
houses, as they were called, there were, one would fancy, 
more than enough, since towards the middle of the present 
century, fifteen, at least, were flourishing. At certain 
seasons, such as the cattle fair, these would have a brisk 
trade, but, ordinarily, would depend on parish patronage, 
and passing travellers, of whom there Would probably be 
a considerable number. Many of the oldest of these are 
now altered into dwelling houses, or shops ; that of 
Mr. Mackie, in Burn Street, being an instance. 

But the most complete specimen of the last century 
posting house and inn, is the Black Bull, situated at the 
southern entrance to the village, a handsome old building, 
and most advantageously placed to catch the passing 
traffic. In its ancient parlours, my Lords and Gentlemen 
would, no doubt, often crack a bottle or two of claret. 



45 

while the horses were being changed or baited, while ali 
the house, even to the ample kitchen, would sometimes 
be filled, when a snow storm had made the roads impass- 
able for travellers, on foot or otherwise. The iron horse 
has changed all that, but, lingering over the picturesque 
aspect of the age, its many drawbacks are forgotten : the 
cost and waste of time occasioned by these tedious and 
uncertain journeys, the anxiety of mind and soreness of 
heart, which must often have been their consequences dur- 
ing such delays as have been indicated. The clean sanded 
kitchen, with its bright tins, reflecting the glow of the 
blazing fire, and the smoking bowl, indispensable to the 
times ; the good cheer, provided by the buxom landlady ; 
and the group of merry travellers, glad to have found 
shelter from rough weather, and passing the hours with 
song and jest, and tales of horror, or otherwise, as 
novelists are wont to describe, is putting the experi- 
ence in its most favourable light, and is a view 
not often taken by those who journeyed much during 
the latter half of last century. To their mind, the 
landlady was not always buxom, or the servant lass pretty, 
nor perhaps did the guest care much whether they were 
or not ; nay, it was occasionally the case that these func- 
tionaries took an unreasonable distaste to a new arrival, 
and then poor attendance, damp sheets, and cold victuals, 
would be his lot. Indeed, the host and his subordinates 
were generally very independent, and indifferent enough 
in their manner, except to those who were the great ones 
of the earth. Burns found such an experience, at Inver- 
ary, trying enough to his proud spirit, and his keen feeling, 
regarding the Sanquhar adventure, may be discerned be- 
tween the lines, even in his attempt at calm narration. 
*' In January last," he v/rites, " I had to put up at Bailie 



46 

Whigham's, in Sanquhar — the only tolerable inn in the 
place. The frost was keen, and the grim evening and 
howling wind were ushering in a night of snow and drift. 
My horse and I were both much fatigued with the 
labours of the day; and, just as my friend the Bailie 
and I were bidding defiance to the storm, over a smok- 
ing bowl, in wheels the funeral pageantry of the late Mrs. 
Oswald, and poor I am forced to brave all the terrors of 
the tempestuous night, and jade my horse — my young 
favourite horse, whom I had just christened Pegasus — 
further on, through the wildest hills and moors of Ayr- 
shire, to the next inn. The powers of poetry and prose 
sink under me when I would describe what I felt." 

Neither were these houses always bright with cheerful 
company; they could be tedious enough places of detention 
at times. Alexander Carlyle, in his autobiography, tells how 
dully the time passed in a country hostel, in the Lothians, 
where he was storm stayed for some days, though but a few 
miles from the place he wished to reach. There were no 
books worth mentioning, and neither the conversation of 
the landlord, nor the fact that the guidwife had been that 
** Bonnie Lass o' Livingstone," celebrated in Scottish 
song, seemed to make up for other deficiences. Upon 
the whole, " the good old times," in regard to the houses 
of entertainment, as well as in other respects, are best to 
be seen through the haze of romance, and, we imagine, 
that few, even of their professed admirers, would care 
to leave the comforts of the present utilitarian days, to be 
spirited back, could this be possible, on the chance of 
finding pleasures which seldom existed. 



BURNS AND 
TARBOLTON. 



I HE men and women, who peopled Tarbolton 
towards the close of the eighteenth century, 
existed under such different conditions of life 
from those of the present day, as to make some re- 
capitulation necessary to a full understanding of their 
circumstances. At that period, and for some time after, 
Britain might be said to be under a paternal Govern- 
ment, which, as was customary with paternity in those 
days, bestowed more blows than caresses. Even kind- 
hearted conscientious George III., knew no better way 
of encouraging the good, and repressing the evil of those 
he governed, than by increasing the death penalties. In 
those days there was no such institution as " The People," 
only " subjects," and these, IiOrd Cockburn tells us, were 
divided into two classes, the nobility, gentry, and pro- 
fessions forming one — the rest of mankind the other. 
The latter had no voice whatever in governing the 
country, nor were they even expected to interest 
themselves in politics. So lately as 1811, Baron Wood 
indignantly denied, from the bench, the right of the 
under-section to discuss the acts of the legislature. 
With the election of Members of Parliament they 
had nothing to do, for, in the Burghs the Town Councils 
appointed delegates by whom the members were 
chosen, and as these bodies nominated their successors 



the people had not even an apparent connection with the 
representation of the country, and often only knew of an 
election when the bells were rung to celebrate it; the 
Government and the landed gentlemen regulating every 
such event. There were no proper reports of the pro- 
ceedings in Parliament, for representatives of the press 
were not allowed to take notes of such. The newspapers 
were small, and only issued once or twice a week, and 
the duty on them was so high as to make their possession 
almost prohibitory to the poor man, except by combining 
to take one among many. But it was neither expected 
nor wished in high quarters that those who had no 
political rights should interest themselves about the 
mode of government, all the requirements were that 
they should obey implicitly, and pay for their taxed 
necessaries without grumbling. These taxes were not 
so oppressive as they became after the Continental wars 
of the end of last and beginning of the present century, 
and so long as the staple articles of food were fairly 
reasonable, it did not much matter that such luxuries as 
tea and sugar were so costly that the consumption of the 
latter reached only to about two hundred and ninety 
ounces for each individual, and of the former to no more 
than twenty-six ounces. The postal rates were so excess- 
ive as to make the passage of letters almost prohibitory 
to the poor, and people of all conditions were fain to 
resort to various devices in carrying on a necessary 
correspondence, even at the risk of detection and punish- 
ment. Some of these were both laughable and pathetic. 
A gentleman saw the postman deliver a letter to the maid 
of a country inn, which, after scrutinising it carefully, she 
returned, on the score that she could not pay the postage. 
The on-looker, feeling sorry for what he fancied would 



49 



be a disappointment, paid the sum, but was surprised by 
the girl telhng him he had thrown away his money, and, 
opening the letter, disclosed only a blank sheet of paper ! 
The explanation was, that her brother, living at a distance, 
and having but small wages, had arranged for letting her 
know by certain marks on the outside, whether he was 
well and prosperous, or the reverse. This plan, how- 
ever, though ingenious, could not have long succeeded. 
Members of Parliament had the privilege of franking 
letters, and we learn that Burns occasionally had the 
advantage of this, but we may be very sure he would not 
often ask for it, and we are told that a west-country 
friend of his, visiting Ellisland, declared on his return 
that the poet would never make a living off the land if 
he answered all the shoals of letters which he received 
daily. 

Slavery existed in Scotland till the last day of the 
century, for only then were the colliers and salters de- 
clared free to offer their services elsewhere than in the mine 
in which their parents had wrought, and along with which 
they were bound to be bought and sold. But the work- 
man or labourer who desired to better himself by seeking 
higher wages, or a more agreeable master, was looked on 
with suspicion, as being of those who wished to unsettle 
the country, and an act was in existence which made it 
criminal for such to enter into any combination, either 
to raise wages, or to reduce the hours of labour. This 
was not repealed till 1824. If the men and women of 
those days wished to escape punishment, they had to 
walk very warily indeed, for, besides the lighter penalties 
of imprisonment, the jougs, whipping at the cart's tail, 
and the like, there were no less than two hundred and 



5° 

twenty-three capital offences. It was a capital offence for 
a man to appear disguised on a public road, to cut 
down young trees, to shoot at rabbits, to steal from a 
bleachfield, or to purloin any property valued at five 
shillings, and merciful juries often saved the necks of 
the culprits by fixing the value of the stolen goods a few 
pence under the statutory penalty. Even to be kept long 
in jail, was in some cases as bad as a death sentence, for 
diseases were often contracted there which ultimately, 
if not immediately, shortened life. Lord Cockburn's 
description of the " Heart of Midlothian," which was in 
use till the second decade of the present century, applied 
to most of these places of detention. " A most atrocious 
jail it was, the very breath of v/hich almost struck down 
any stranger who entered the dismal door. It was very 
small, the entire hall being filled with little dark cells, 
heavy manacles the only security; airless, waterless, 
drainless, a living grave. One week of that dirty, fetid, 
cruel torture house, was a severer punishment than a 
year of our worst modern prison." 

In accordance with the severity of the laws, a certain 
strictness was observed by superiors in all conditions of 
society to those beneath them. The minister and the 
laird were, except to a few, awe inspiring personages. 
The schoolmaster wielded a mighty power, and used it 
in a fashion which would now gain his instant dismissal. 
The relation of parent and child generally inferred the 
most distant superiority on one side, and complete 
submission (or the profession of it), on the other, and 
correspondence, even between those most attached to 
each other, was conducted with much formality. It will 
be noticed that the letter sent from Irvine by Burns to 



51 

his father, begins with the prefix, « Honoured Sir," and 
ends in the same respectful fashion. Yet this was free- 
dom itself, compared with the restraints of the earlier 
part of the century, when young people (at least of the 
upper classes), dared not sit down in the presence of their 
parents without permission, and all their affairs, including 
marriage, were arranged for them, with scant, if any, refer- 
ence to their tastes or feelings. The want of reverence 
for parents at the present day may be deplored, but a 
degree of subservience prevailed in other matters, which 
few would wish to be preserved. Of such was a 
custom then common, which decreed that the minister 
should, on the conclusion of his discourse and before 
leaving the pulpit, bow to each of the principal heritors. 
This could not have been congenial to all of the 
ministers, and must have caused heart-burning among 
the parishioners. 

A feeling very prominent in Scotland and England of 
olden times, which the advent of railways has helped to 
obliterate although its traces are still to be met with, was 
quite a feature in the village life of last century, namely, 
that distrust of, and dislike to strangers which was a 
remainder of the times when the petty barons quarrelled 
and were jealous of each other, and their followers took 
up their cause with zeal. The satire in Punch, " Here's 
a stranger. Bill, let's 'eave 'alf a brick at 'im," was in 
reality no exaggeration even then, in the part indicated, 
and, earlier, was a common feeling in most of the rural 
districts. In the Lothians, a decided tendency to sus- 
picion regarding their neighbours on the opposite coast 
was expressed, till far on in the present century, by the 
warning, "take care o' them, they're boated," and the 



52 

little Burgh of Forfar, we are told, had a hard time of it 
between two neighbours, Dundee and Kirriemuir, while, 
to this day, their mutual terms of vituperation are pre- 
served in the localities. On one occasion, no less a person 
than Drummond of Hawthornden, profited by this ani- 
mosity. Being on a journey, he arrived in the evening at 
Forfar where he intended to put up, but the inhabitants, 
as strict Presbyterians, had no sympathy with his princi- 
ples, and on his entrance he found every door, including 
that of the inn, shut against him. There was no 
alternative but to go on to Kirriemuir, where he would 
have been quite as unwelcome as at Forfar, but, when 
his treatment in the latter place was made known, the 
Kirriemuir folks received him with the greatest cordiality, 
vieing with each other who should have the privilege of 
entertaining him, no doubt to the great disgust and 
chagrin of their rivals. 

The cheapness of liquor before the Union, and the 
facilities for smuggling after, perhaps laid the foundations 
of those habits of drunkenness which were so long and 
so prominently characteristic of Scottish society. It is 
simply surprising how the business of life was carried on 
under such disabilities. Lord Hermand, a connection of 
Lord Cockburn, may be taken as a fair example of the 
general feeling and conduct of his profession. He had the 
poorest possible opinion of any one whose health or taste 
did not permit of deep potations. In a case which was 
tried before him, it was pleaded in extenuation of the 
culprit that he committed the offence when drunk. 
" Drunk," exclaimed his lordship in horror, " if he could 
do such a thing when he was drunk, what would he do 
when he was sober ! " His lordship himself, on one 



53 

occasion, when on circuit, got drunk along with the other 
members of the bar, at Ayr, and kept in this condition 
throughout the whole round, which concluded at Jedburgh, 
doing their work quite correctly all the time, but remem- 
bered for long after as " the daft Circuit." It must have 
been the bluntness of their nervous system which enabled 
these men to live out all their days — and a larger number 
of them than our brain workers of the present reach, yet 
it may be that succeeding generations are paying the 
debts of their forefathers in this, as well as in other 
matters. At the Circuit dinners, it was customary for 
Lord Herman d, and those members of the bar who were 
equal to it, to sit drinking throughout the entire night, 
go upstairs in the morning to wash their faces and hands, 
return to breakfast, and put in an appearance in Court 
quite fresh and fit for their duties. As regards capacity, 
the clergy were not far behind the legal profession in this 
direction. Carlyle, of Inveresk, credits the leaders of the 
opposite parties in the Church with similar characteristics. 
Doctor Webster [evangelical] was, he says, " held to be 
excellent company, even by those of dissolute manners, 
while, being a five bottle man, he could lay them all 
under the table." Dr. Gumming, again, "had both learning 
and sagacity, and very agreeable conversation, with a 
constitution able to bear the conviviality of the times." 
So far from any blame attaching to hard drinking, it was 
regarded by most persons as a sign of manliness and 
strength, and those who were physically incapable of 
excesses, or whose tastes did not lie in that direction, 
were looked upon with contemptuous pity. A certain 
laird was very indignant when it was charged against 
drinking that it sometimes killed people. " Na, na," he 
retorted, "I never knew anybody killed wi' drinkin\ but I 



54 

hae kend some that dee'd in the training." A church 
official, examined regarding a charge of drunkenness 
brought against his minister, was asked if he had ever 
seen him the worse of drink. " I canna say that I ever 
saw him the waur o' drink," was the reply, " but nae doot 
I've seen him the better o't ! " Pressed to say if being 
the better of it meant a state of helpless intoxication, he 
answered, " Indeed afore that cam', I was blin' fou mysel', 
an' could see naething." 

The excesses of the landed proprietors have been 
too widely celebrated to need rehearsing. The bonnet 
lairds used to forgather on market days in some favourite 
tavern, and rarely reached home till the succeeding day — 
often not even then. One such was found by a servant 
after a " sitting," as they termed it, astride a turf dyke, 
vigorously urging his tardy steed to further progress. 
Another, after dining out, appeared at a road-side inn, 
with a bridle over his arm, which he flung to the ostler, 
desiring him to take his horse, but as no quadruped was 
visible, the man gaped in speechless surprise. The 
traveller, evidently at the quarrelsome stage, was beginning 
to express his opinion of what he counted the man's im- 
pertinence, when the landlord, appearing, took in the 
situation at a glance, and asked Jock with an air of 
severity what he was staring at, that he did not take 

Mr. 's horse to the stable, thus, by his tact, avoiding 

a scene, and preventing a good customer finding himself 
ridiculous. In a letter referring to the sale of the stock 
at Ellisland, Burns writes — "After the roup was over, 
about thirty people engaged in a battle, every one for his 
own hand, and fought it out for three hours. Nor was 
the scene much better in the house, no fighting indeed, 



55 
but folks lying drunk on the floor." 

Considering the temptations to inebriety, it is surprising 
how anyone contrived to keep sober. At births, mar- 
riages, and deaths, as well as at festivals and ordinary 
merry-makings, or even a call between neighbours, 
temptation lay in wait continually. A dinner party 
meant for gentlemen a sitting of many hours, and a con- 
stant consumption of liquors. In some cases the bottoms 
were knocked off the glasses to baulk the unwilling 
drinker in his attempts to shirk a round of the bottle, 
since no excuse for abstinence was accepted. It will be 
remembered that Burns, in that pathetic letter of apology 
which he wrote to Mrs. Riddell, after the unfortunate 
incident which occurred at a dinner party in her house, 
states that he makes no excuse to her husband, or the 
other gentlemen present, since the former had no right 
to blame him, as he had insisted on his drinking more 
than he chose, while the latter had been partakers of his 
guilt. Even before the departure of the ladies from 
table there was the customary round of toasts, when each 
lady was expected to name an absent gentleman, and 
each gentleman an absent lady, in honour of whom the 
glass must be drained. This fashion, and that of giving 
sentiments, the lower classes eagerly adopted, and retained 
long after they were discarded by their superiors. On 
the Ayrshire coast the prevalence of smuggling had a 
most demoralising effect on the population, and when a 
cargo was run, it was common for men, women, and 
children in the onstead to be drunk for three days at a 
time. On more than one occasion at the farm of Shanter, 
whose tenant was immortalised by Burns, the breakfast 
porridge were made with brandy instead of water ! not so 



56 

surprising, however, when we learn that every vessel in 
the house was generally in requisition to hold the liquor. 

Another trait of those times, now happily absent from 
respectable society, was the habit of swearing, which was 
widely prevalent among all classes. The judges on the 
bench swore, gentlemen cultivated the vice as an accom- 
plishment, and though ladies were getting more fastidious 
perhaps, towards the end of the century, a few years earlier 
they could garnish their conversation with these expletives 
quite as liberally as did their lords. It is noticeable that 
Burns, in his correspondence with some of the more 
" modish " of his lady friends, (as Mrs. Riddell), affected 
the fashionable vice. Even the clergy had a certain 
latitude of speech, which is strange to think of at the 
present day. One of these, remarking to a parishioner 
on the bad prospects for harvest, was answered, " Deed, 
sir, I've seen as muckle as that there'll be nae hairst the 
year." To which the minister responded, *' Na, na, Janet, 
diel as muckle as that o't ever ye saw." But, when these 
gentlemen did recognise the national error in this respect, 
they were prompt in advocating amendment. One, in 
fencing the tables at the Communion, debarred all such 
as used minced oaths as Faith ! Troth ! Losh ! Gosh ! and 
the like. Yet, it was not easy to discourage a practice 
which had its admirers even among those who did not 
indulge in it. Of such was the lady who remarked, 
regarding her brother, "Oor John sweers awfu', an' we try 
tae correct him, but nae doot it is a great set aff tae 
conversation ! " Along with such habits went a certain 
freedom of speech which bordered on coarseness. Those 
who have known men and women born early in this 
century, will remember this feature as being strongly 



57 

marked in some, not alone those brought up in the 
-country, but also in others town bred, and in good 
society. Yet these were perfectly decent and virtuous 
people, having the manners of their time, preserved in 
■some families longer than others. But in respect of 
at least a portion of the women there were compensations 
which atoned for this drawback, for they had the rare art 
of being economical, and yet having the appearance of 
abundance, and they cooked the national dishes with 
a nicety which is scarcely to be met with at the present 
day. Moreover there was about many of them a charm, 
difficult alike to analyse or describe, a dry humour which 
showed itself in such odd turns of speech, and quaint 
ways of putting things, that not a dull hour could be 
-spent in their company, while a shrewd capacity for house- 
hold government often went along with much kindness 
-of heart. Dean Ramsay preserves some characteristic 
illustrations of this class. One of them was asked for a 
subscription in war time to raise men for the King. 
"Deed I'll dae nae sic thing," she answered, "I ne'er 
could raise a man for mysel', an' I'm no gaun tae raise 
men for King George." Another, while dying, and sup- 
posed to be unconscious, overhearing one of her friends 
say, "Her face has lost its colour, it's like a sheet of 
paper," startled them by the response "then I'm sure 
it maun be broon paper." Sometimes a confusion of 
ideas made their speech as piquant as wit could have 
done, as in the case of the old lady who, on learning of 
the proposed introduction of gas, asked with much 
anxiety, "An' what's tae become o' the puir whales?" 
Tarbolton was cheered by the possession of one such in 
the earlier part of the present century. Being in a shop 
on one occasion, she became interested in some very 



58 

large eggs, lying in a basket near at hand. " Eh t 
whatten big eggs, " she exclaimed, " there'll no be mony 
o' thae tae the dizen ! " One Saturday night a girl entered 
to her hastily, " Jean, I houp ye're mindin' that Monday's 
cor washin' day, an' we'll expect ye tae gie us a haun', if 
ye're spared." " Me no spared lassie," was the indignant 
reply, '* diel tak ye ! wuU I no be spared till Monday ? '* 

Such are a few slight indications of the laws, manners^ 
and customs, which governed and moulded the lives and 
characters of the people of Scotland during the latter 
part of the last century, and which must be taken into 
consideration in any judgment which may be formed 
concerning them, and more especially as regards their 
influence on our national poet, for Burns was essentially 
a man of his time, and extremely open to outward im- 
pressions. How readily he caught the prevalent tone of 
his society for the time being, is visible throughout his 
life, and shows in his correspondence, and here it is that 
so many err in their judgment of him, for, had he been 
the great and steadfast soul, strong amid the feeble, and 
high above the faults and follies of his time, as farsighted 
and wise as they would have had him to be, and as he would 
have rejoiced to find himself, then he would have required 
to be gifted with a different temperament, and to have 
been placed among different surroundings; he would have 
been less in touch with humanity and he would not have 
been our Burns. 

Both parish and village of Tarbolton have changed 
since the days when the hard-working family from Mount 
Oliphant took up their abode at Lochlea, the former, 
perhaps, most so. The weaving trade was still prosper- 



59 

ous, though not so good as it had been. In spite of the 
almost continuous wars of the eighteenth century, trade 
and commerce had flourished fairly well, and taxation 
was not yet so heavy as it afterwards became. But the 
unfortunate war with America depleted the country very 
much, and Robert Burns, writing in eighty-three, to his 
relative in the North, took rather a dark view of the 
condition of Ayrshire, and shewed at once a degree of 
prejudice, and some prescience. The failure of Douglas, 
Heron, and Co.'s bank, had ruined a good many of the 
county gentry, and the writer declares that their imitation 
of English, French, and other foreign luxuries and 
fopperies, had undone as many more. Yet, this affair, 
though disastrous to so many at the time, was the means 
of giving an impetus to public and private enterprise, 
which proved most beneficial to the West of Scotland. 
He goes on to speak of the high price of grain, no doubt 
from the standpoint of a buyer, for in those days of bad 
roads, and expensive locomotion, each land-holder had 
to raise his own supplies, and when, as often happened, 
these ran short, then the expense of buying, both for 
stock and household consumption, where money was not 
very plentiful, must have been a serious consideration. 
He also laments the attempts of the landlords to introduce 
newer modes of working the land, blames them for not 
taking into account the quality of the ground, and pre- 
dicts that the farmers will in the end be bankrupt. The 
farmers were much at a loss, he submits, for want of 
proper methods in regard to these new improvements, 
having little opportunity of information regarding them, 
and altogether he believes the country to be decaying 
very fast. He has the sense and foresight, however, to 
be aware that the smuggling trade so largely carried on 



6o 

along the coast, though it enriched a few, was detrimental 
to the morals of the people, and inimical to the nation 
at large. In regard to agricultural changes, Burns but 
echoed the beliefs of his class. Although there was a 
feeling among the people that reforms, both political and 
social, were desirable, yet, in the West, among the tillers 
of the soil, the traditions of their past of despotic tyranny 
had made their present advantages so highly appreciated 
as to induce a conservative dislike to change, and a desire 
to be left in peace to follow the ways of their fathers ; and 
they had shown their thankfulness for the benefits of a 
constitutional government by a loyalty so conspicuous, 
that during the rebellion of forty-five it was believed that 
not a single Ayrshire man joined the forces of the 
Pretender. 

The farmers of to-day, so ready to make the most of 
the benefits by which science a^ds their industry, must 
find it hard to realize the methods by which their fields 
were wrought in earlier years. No rotation of crops, no 
artificial manures to renew the exhausted soil, no deep 
drainage, no reaping or threshing machines ; and the old- 
fashioned heavy plough, with its four horses, believed to be 
quite sufficient for its purpose. The best husbandry was, 
as in pre-reformation times, to be found among the 
clergy, and they were quick to adopt the new improve- 
ments, but even such practical lessons failed to convince 
the majority. Yet there was much need of change in 
many respects. The farms throughout the parish were 
small, and generally let at from five to thirty-five pounds per 
annum, though a few went as high as seventy. The soil 
was difficult to work, unfriendly to corn, and sadly in 
need of draining. Neither turnips nor cabbages were 



6i 

grown, nor any vegetables but green kail, while potatoes 
were not yet freely used. The rearing of swine, which 
might have been a source of profit, was forbidden by the 
strong national prejudice against those animals. Carts, 
of a clumsy sort, were just coming into use, and fanners 
were being manufactured on the east coast, but there 
was a strong feeling against these, as being an interference 
with the course of nature, and thus not under the pro- 
tection of Providence. The farm steadings were mean, 
generally built of rough whin stones, with clay as mortar, 
and roofs of thatch, the byre within the same walls as 
the household, this being preferred as convenient, and 
the vicinity of cows declared to be conducive to health, 
while any proposal to remove the dunghill from the 
neighbourhood of the house was deeply resented. The 
people of the west were not singular in this taste, how- 
ever, for at a much later date, when, in anticipation of a 
threatened outbreak of cholera, a committee of gentlemen 
in the north were appointed to take order regarding the 
removal of the dunghills from the vicinity of houses, 
they were accosted when entering Forres by a resolute 
looking woman, who thus addressed herself to the prin- 
cipal member of the party, " Noo, Major, we ken fine 
what ye've come aboot, an' ye may tak oor lives, but 
ye'U no tak oor middens ! " Lord Eghnton declared that 
he required his tenants to exchange their steadings every 
few years, in order to save their beds from rotting, as 
the water was actually running down the walls in some 
instances, but his good intentions were so little appreciated 
that when his lordship met his death at the hands of 
Mungo Campbell, the country people averred that they 
had thought all along that he had been fey, meaning that 
his activity in pressing agricultural improvements had 



62 

been the restlessness which foreshadows approaching 
death. 

The people's mode of living matched their dwellings, 
and would now be considered rude in the extreme. The 
farmer and his household, including the servants, had 
their food together, and of the same quality, porridge 
or brose in the morning, accompanied (when milk was 
scarce), with ale of their own brewing. At dinner, kail, 
as often as not made without meat, with mashlum scones, 
that is, scones made with different kinds of flour, as 
peasemeal, beanmeal, and oatmeal, mixed, and perhaps 
oatcakes and cheese after, but no variety of vegetables 
to vary the repast, and even the humble rhubarb had not 
then come into use. Supper sometimes consisted of 
porridge, or a pot of potatoes, if the supply had not run 
out, or occasionally, as a treat, sowens. But never tea, 
which was not even used by the farmer's wife, indeed it 
was either in Tarbolton parish or on the confines of it, 
that such an one, being complimented by her landlord 
with a pound of this luxury, and not liking to show her 
ignorance of the new fashion by asking directions as to 
cooking, decided on treating it as a vegetable, boiled it 
as greens, drained off the fluid, and triumphantly presen- 
ted it at dinner time as a treat to the reapers ! The 
manner of serving the victuals, too, was primitive in the 
extreme. Table cloths there were none, and the potatoes 
were tumbled out on the bare board, without the inter- 
vention of a platter. At harvest time, when work was 
harder and hours longer than usual, as well as extra 
labourers to feed, flesh was generally served with the kail, 
but the only knife and fork on the table were used by 
the guidman in carving, and each portion cut was passed 



63 

to the company in rotation, grasped in one hand, and, 
with a potato in the other, thus eaten, for the convenience 
of a plate was never expected. The kail and porridge 
were alike served in a large bowl, and the company 
armed with long-handled wooden or horn spoons, drew 
their chairs a short distance from the table, and fell to. 
Possibly the distance from the viands would be originally 
meant to inculcate moderation, and check undue haste 
in eating. Fifty years ago, there were two survivals of this 
custom, in the parish, one, in one of the farmhouses, and 
the other, in the house of an old couple named Osborne, but 
presumably the fashion died with them. These habits seem 
rude and strange at the present day, but it must be borne 
in mind that at one time similar manners prevailed in 
England also, and that Scotland was retarded in her 
progress towards refinement by her poverty, her isolation, 
and the almost constant political troubles she had 
endured. And, moreover, the men who lived in this 
rude mode, cultivated a stoical indifference to discomfort 
as being more manly, and were often of considerable 
ability, generally practised theologians, and, when they 
tried conclusions with the world, were apt to conquer 
fortune. 

Farm work was onerous in those times no doubt, for 
servants connected with the onsteads had no fixed hours 
but came and went at their master's pleasure. The 
maids of to-day would think it hard if they had to spin 
for an hour or two after outside work was done, yet, that 
was exacted from their predecessors till a much later 
period than that of which we write. Wages for outside 
workers were counted good at tenpence to a shilling per 
diem. Those of a hind v/ere five pounds a year, with a 



64 

house and yard, six and a half bolls of oatmeal, and a 
cow's maintenance. It will be remembered that the 
Burns family allotted to each of themselves, seven pounds 
a year, and their living would no doubt be of the most 
economical. Hard as such work might be, however, it 
was not monotonous, the exhilaration of the open air, 
and the labourers being numerous and of opposite sexes, 
made it cheerful, and its quality changed with the seasons. 
Their holidays were not frequent, but they made the 
most of them. They had the delightful whole day at the 
feeing time, and the dance at the kirn, after the last sheaf 
was garnered, and Hallowe'en of the mystic rites, to look 
forward to, as well as the feasting and treating of Hand- 
sell Monday. And, in the long winter nights, when the 
household gathered round the wide ingle, and while the 
lasses turned the spinning wheel, and songs and stories 
made the hours fly, who shall say that there was no com- 
pensation for the early hours, and hard fare, and rough 
labour ? The rockings too were great sources of delight, 
being held by rotation in neighbours' houses, to which 
the favourite lad carried his lass's spinning wheel, for the 
days of the rock and spindle were gone, though not long 
before, and the youths from far and near put in an 
appearance, and mirth and song were the order of the 
night. Last, though not least, was the day at the kirk, 
with the pleasure of wearing different and fresh clothes, 
and the important part of it, which was hearing the clash 
of the country side in the kirkyard, and the walk home 
with the lads as convoy afterwards. No wonder Robin 
sang the delights of a ploughman's life. 

The tokens of the decline or extinction of an industry 
are always touching, but most sad when they take the 



6s 

form of ruinous or deserted houses, and in Tarbolton 
such are painfully visible, indeed it is impossible to escape 
the sight. How, and when, and where did they go, those 
ruined weavers of the past ? Did they leave in a body, 
or drop off, family by family, the younger men to seek in 
the large centres for more work of the same kind, or a 
chance of turning their hand to anything, though it is not 
easy for a bred weaver to do that, or, in despair, they 
might join the rioters who waged their hopeless fight by 
wrecking the power looms, or in vain begged help from 
Government to give them a chance in Canada. As for the 
old folks, if there was no married son or daughter to 
"gie them a bit place," where, with the help of the "gien 
piece that's soon eaten," they might end their days in 
quietness if not in plenty, they were in evil case indeed. 
Some of these dwellings are freeholds, and, overgrown 
with nettles and filled with rubbish, cumber the ground, 
because no heir has appeared to claim the inheritance, 
and no one cares to take the risk of appropriating 
the ground. The accommodation of these buildings was 
generally a but and a ben on the ground floor, with the 
apartment for the looms on the opposite side, and some- 
times attics above. Some of the regular weaving shops 
are still to be seen in use, and are substantial two story 
erections, the shop on the ground flat, and dweUing 
house above. If the weaver chose to work hard and live 
soberly, it was possible for him to secure such a compe- 
tence as made his old age comfortable, and many did so, 
but the younger were too much inclined when the web 
was out and the bright guineas clinking in their pockets 
to spend some of them on fashionable attire, and have a 
spell of high living and hard drinking in Ayr or Kilmar- 
nock. The stirrings of a new political era were beginning 



66 

to make themselves felt, and the weavers were always in 
the van of progress, but, unfortunately, they generally 
regarded an attitude of hostility to religion as a necessary 
concomitant of national liberty, an idea originally 
adopted from the writings of Voltaire by those who did 
not know or take the trouble to consider that the form 
of Christianity the Frenchman decried was part of a 
very different system, and its abuses of a nature very 
dissimilar from anything they had ever witnessed. The 
conservative taste of the older weavers, and most part of 
the farmers, showed in their literature, which remained on 
the grandly pure lines of their godly forbears. "The 
Pilgrim's Progress," "Paradise Lost," "The Scots 
Worthies," Baxter's " Saint's Rest," Boston's " Crook in 
the Lot," the "Therapeutica Sacra," of David Dickson, with 
many others of the same class, and, as lighter reading, 
"Blind Harry," and "The Gentle Shepherd," but, in the 
poorer homes, too often the humorous but terribly 
coarse chap book had spoiled the taste of the young 
people for solid study. 

The manner of living as regarded food, was much the 
same as in the country around, but the cooking might be 
a trifle more dainty, for Saunders Tait is minute in des- 
cribing the different modes of preparing the potato, from 
the plain boiled, to the champit, [beat,] which, done with 
milk and butter, and, if procurable, a shred shalot, is 
highly commended, and the stoved, now erroneously 
known as " Irish stew," which was a popular favourite, 
but was rarely, if ever, made with beef or mutton, but 
any scraps of fat which came to hand, or, if possible, with 
kitchen fee, [dripping,] if the cook at any of the big houses 
in the vicinity could supply them with that article. The 



67 

succulent haggis was a prime favourite, but not often to be 
had, since there were no butcher's shops in the country 
villages, the better class families and the farmers alike 
killing for themselves, and that only at the beginning of 
winter, so, unless the villagers combined to buy a beast, 
there was little chance of tasting flesh from one year's 
end to the other, unless by getting it from Ayr or Kil- 
marnock, or as a gift from some friend better off in that 
respect than they were. The bowl and spoons for serving 
the food, were the only table requisites, and we learn 
from the national proverbs, that the latter, though prefer- 
ably so, were not always long. " He should hae a lang 
shafted spune that sups kail wi* the diel." " Better tae 
sup wi' a cutty, [short,] than want a spune." 

Life generally flowed in even and regular course in the 
villages of olden times, and, though small matters 
near at hand bulked large, yet the startling events of 
the outside world reached them by filtering through 
various channels, and would be well-nigh forgotten there, 
ere their significance dawned on Tarbolton. There were 
few temptations to journey from it either, since the poorer 
class had to do so on foot, unless they got a lift in the 
waggon which carried away the webs when finished, and 
many passed a long life without having strayed far from 
the boundaries of their own parish, so that it was a wise 
philosophy which induced them to make the most of 
what they had, and decry the attractions to be found 
elsewhere. Work was plenty and to spare, for even the 
women had their hands full with the pirn winding, or 
field labour, if they preferred it. From six to six were 
the hours of the labourers and mechanics, but they did 
not adhere rigidly to those when work was pressing. 



68 

There was a fine old survival of warlike times in the 
village being roused each morning by tuck of drum, and 
admonished of the hour of rest in the same fashion, at 
nine in the evening. Yet it was not all work and no 
play, for there was plenty of recreation to vary the routine 
of life. Some found enough of this in lounging at the 
bridge near the Cross, where there was always a large 
assemblage to discuss the news of the parish. Then there 
were meetings of the Friendly Society, where, writes 
Saunders Tait — 

"Cheese around the board shall shine, 
Dealt by Will Latto," 

And not only cheese, but various liquors, [Saunders 
recommends a mixture of ale and gin,] made glad the 
hearts of the company — and influenced their speech also, 
no doubt — let us hope to profitable use. And the delight 
of curling on the loch, in winter, when the ice served, and 
work was nothing accounted of in comparision with the 
game, where all men were equals for the time, and, even 
the majesty which surrounded the minister did not screen 
him from censure if his play was bad — this to most was 
really the amusement of the year, and also its crowning 
glory, and supplied a staple subject of talk till the next 
occasion came round. There were gala days, too, when 
Coilsfield's hounds and hawks were out, and all who could 
take a holiday enjoyed the sport. In summer, the 
cattle fair and Ayr races gave ample opportunities for 
gay dissipations. The Bachelors* Club commemorated 
its institution by a dance at that season, as we know, but 
dancing was seasonable at all times in the clachan, and 
Burns, who would not be behind his compeers, braved 
his father's displeasure, and gratified his own taste by a 
course of lessons in the fashionable pleasure. There was 



69 

need of help to brighten those hard-working lives, for 
they had their share of deep troubles. The want of 
sanitary arrangements, the undrained land in the vicinity, 
and the summer's scarcity of water, induced epidemics of 
fever, and the men and women who outlived these visi- 
tations, were but instances of the survival of the fittest. 
The terrible smallpox claimed one in ten of the deaths, 
and every second face bore witness to its ravages. Their 
sons were sometimes lured away, for the glitter of military 
life at Ayr was enticing, and the recruiting sergeant was ever 
on the watch for such likely lads, while their daughters 
often caused them grief in a way all too common. 

•• Is there in human form that bears a heart — 

A Wretch ! a Villain ! lost to love and truth ! 
That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art, 

Betray sweet Jenny's unsuspecting youth ? 
Curse on his perjur'd arts ! dissembling smooth ! 

Are Honour^ Virtue^ Conscience, all exil'd ! 
Is there no Pity, no relenting Ruth, 

Points to the Parents fondling o'er their Child ? 
Then paints the ruin'd Maid, and their distraction wild." 

Here, however, the bard paints from the standpoint of his 
father's household, with its pure and virtuous upbringing. 

One of the compensating features of the feudal system 
was the claims of the vassals on the protection and 
assistance in emergency, of the over lord, to which, even 
after the abolition of heritable jurisdiction, the latter 
rarely failed to respond. The country gentry being 
seldom long absent from their estates, took an active 
interest in the affairs of both tenants and villagers, and 
were able to help them in many ways. In some cases, 
the farmers' wives were expected to give a few days 
spinning at the big house, annually, which must have 



70 

been a pleasant variation in the monotony of home duties, 
and would serve to keep the classes in touch with each 
other, since domestic matters on both sides would doubt- 
less be freely discussed. The relative positions were so 
well defined that a certain easy freedom prevailed, and a 
liberty of speech was permitted which would not be 
thought of at the present day. People could take the 
measure of the laird's foot, nicely, and knew just how far 
they might go with impunity. " Hi ! come back, sir, 
that's not the road," called out the Earl of Eglinton to a 
fellow designated as Daft Will Speirs, but who was no 
fool in regard to his own interests. " Dae ye ken whaur 
I'm gaun?" asked Will. His lordship replied that he 
did not. "Weel, hoo the deevil dae ye ken whether 
this be the road or no ? " The Earl of Balcarres, father 
of the authoress of " Auld Robin Gray," was the possessor 
of a kind heart, and a quick temper, both of which 
characteristics were turned to account by those on his 
estate, who were well aware that his bark was worse than 
his bite, and knew that if he gave way to a fit of passion, 
regarding anything they wished from him, they had but 
to wait till he recovered himself, when they were sure of 
getting it. His lordship was a great agriculturist, and 
going early one morning, to inspect a particularly fine 
field of turnips, to his indignant surprise he found an old 
woman, who was a constant recipient of the Countess's 
bounty, busily engaged in filling a bag with the choice 
roots. Of course he flew into a rage, and stormed for a 
time, while she said never a word to all his accusations 
of ingratitude and so forth, but continued dropping 
curtseys at each point in the discourse. At length his 
passion expended itself, and he turned abruptly away, 
feeling, as was his wont, very much ashamed, but he had 



71 

not taken many steps when he heard the culprit calling 
him, and walked back, expecting to hear some apology 
for her offence. " Oh, my lord," she began, in a tone of 
pathetic entreaty, " before ye gang, wad ye no just gie 
me a bit lift wi' the bag, for it's unco heavy!" The 
gentle folks were not unmindful of the semple folks either, 
when festivities were on hand, and arranged that, in some 
form or other, they should have a share, not only in the 
John Girder style, of anything totally uneatable, but a 
supply there was no shame in giving or receiving. The 
last Cunningham of Enterken, who seems to have been a 
fair example of the Scots gentleman of the old school, 
gave three successive entertainments annually, the first 
being devoted to those of his own grade, the second to 
the tenant farmers on the estate, and the third to the 
villagers, of whom all and sundry were welcome to attend. 
There must have been often ties of affection as well as 
duty between the superior and those on his ground, 
and it is both pleasant and curious to reflect that the 
misdeeds and injustice of the old order in its heyday of 
power have left so little bitterness as te be almost com- 
pletely forgotten in the soft and kindly glow of its sunset. 

It was amid such surroundings of place and people 
that the callow fledgling of Lochlea preened his wings for 
that flight which v/as to make the world wonder. It is 
interesting to learn what attainments this youth of nine- 
teen brought to the place which was to have such an 
important influence in determining his future character 
and life. "I was," he writes to Dr. Moore, in 1787, "at 
the beginning of this period, perhaps the most ungainly 
awkward boy in the parish — no solitaire was less 
acquainted with the ways of the world. What I knew of 



72 

ancient story was gathered from Salmon and Guthrie's 
geographical grammars, and the ideas I had formed of 
modern manners, of literature and criticism, I got from 
the Spectator. These, with 'Pope's Works,' some plays of 
'Shakespeare,' 'Tull and Dickson on Agriculture,' *The 
Pantheon,' 'Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding,' 
* Stackhouse's History of the Bible,' 'Justice's British 
Gardener's Directory,' 'Bayle's Lectures,' 'Allan Ram- 
say's Works,' 'Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin,' 
'A Select Collection of English Songs,' and 'Harvey's 
Meditations,' had formed the whole of my reading." His 
brother Gilbert tells us that " Robert was proficient in 
grammar and remarkable for the fluency and correctness 
of his expression, "while Murdoch, the teacher of both boys, 
testifies that they were able to talk and reason like men, 
much sooner than their neighbours, remarking also on 
the grave and thoughtful expression of the future poet. 
The lads seem to have been indebted both to heredity, 
and the care of their excellent father for their dis- 
tinguishing peculiarities. He was for some time, we 
learn, almost the only companion they had, and treated 
them as if they had been grown up, taking pains to lead 
the conversation to such subjects as might tend to 
increase their knowledge, or confirm them in virtuous 
habits. A schoolmate of the brothers, young Tennant of 
Ayr, was greatly impressed by the intellectual abilities of 
both, for they were like no other youths — their style of 
language being quite above their compeers, while no 
man could stand before Robert in controversy, and he 
had the New Testament more at command than any one 
Tennant had ever known. Writing of his feelings at the 
period referred to in the letter above quoted, the poet 
continues, " The great misfortune of my life was to want 



73 

an aim. I saw my father's situation entailed on me per- 
petual labour . . . I had felt early some stirrings of 
ambition . . . but the only two openings by which 
I could enter the temple of fortune, was the gate of 
niggardly economy, or the path of little chicaning 
bargain-making. The first is so contracted an aperture 
that I never could squeeze myself into it — the last I 
always hated." He goes on to speak of his constitutional 
melancholy, which his brother attributes to the hard work 
and anxiety of his earlier years, when the pain of watching 
the ineffectual struggles of the husband and father to 
make both ends meet, told heavily on the household. 
This would aggravate the disorder no doubt, yet, after all, 
it was but the royalty which genius must pay for the 
wealth of the intellect and the affections. " Though by 
nature of an athletic form," writes an early biographer, 
"Burns had in his constitution the peculiarities and 
the delicacies that belong to the temperament of genius. 
He was liable from a very early period of life to that 
interruption in the process of digestion, which arises from 
deep and anxious thought, and which is sometimes the 
effect, and sometimes the cause, of depression of spirits. 
Endowed by nature with great sensibility of nerves, 
Burns was, in his corporeal system, as well as his mental, 
liable to inordinate impressions — to fever of body as well 
as of mind." When Phrenology had its say, all too late 
for its chart to be of service in steering his course, its 
verdict confirmed the existence of those strong ten- 
dencies to aberration, of which Burns so often hinted, 
and which, read by those of mere equable natures, seem 
akin to affectation. "No phrenologist," writes Mr 
George Combe, " can look upon this head, and consider 
the circumstances in which Burns was placed, without 



74 

vivid feelings of regret. Burns must have walked the 
earth with z consciousness of great superiority over his 
associates in the station in which he was placed — of 
powers calculated for a far higher sphere than that which 
he was able to reach, and of passions which he could with 
difficulty restrain, and which it was fatal to indulge. If 
he had been placed from infancy in the higher ranks of 
life, liberally educated, and employed in pursuits corres- 
ponding to his powers, the inferior portion of his nature 
would have lost part of its energy, while his better 
qualities would have assumed a decided and permanent 
superiority .... The combination, as it exists, 
bespeaks a mind extremely subject to contending emo- 
tions, capable of great good, or great evil — and encom- 
passed with vast difficulties in preserving a steady, even> 
onward course of practical morality." 

" And others, like your humble servan*, 
Poor wights ! nae rules nor roads observin', 
To right or left, eternal swervin', 

They zig-zag on ; 
Till curst with Age, obscure and starvin', 

They aften groan. 

Oh ye, douse folk, that live by rule, 
Grave, tideless-blooded, calm and cool, 
Compar'd wi' you — Oh fool ! fool ! fool ! 

How much unlike ! 
Your hearts are just a standing pool, 

Your lives a dyke ! 

Alas ! what bitter toil and straining — 
But truce with peevish, poor complaining ! 
Is fortune's fickle Luna waning ? 

E'en let her gang ! 
Beneath what light she has remaining, 

Let's sing our Sang." 



75 

Though his heart was completely tinder, as he tells 
Dr. Moore, he had not yet got over the bashfulness of 
boyhood, and had a habit of walking with his eyes fixed 
on the ground, and rather avoiding the vicinity of the 
fair sex. On one occasion, while at Kirkoswald, he was 
passing the daughters of the parish minister in this 
fashion, when one of them called out to him, desiring to 
know why he preferred looking on the ground to the 
privilege of looking on, and talking to women. "Madam," 
he answered — with a fine reminiscence of "The Spectator," 
and the " Letters of the wits of Queen Anne's time," — " it 
is a natural and right thing for man to contemplate the 
ground from whence he was taken, and for woman to 
look upon and observe man, from whom she was taken." 
This was his " 'prentice han' " at compliments, before he 
had realized his possession of that power to evoke the 
interest and admiration of the sex, which was to be the 
solace and pride of his life. 

In spite of the depression of ill health, and the pre^ 
monitions of despair, the stirrings of ambition, which he 
never expected to see gratified, urged the youth to make 
the most of his slender opportunities of impressing the 
little world in which his lot was now cast. He steadfastly 
pursued those studies in polemical divinity, the exploiting 
of which was, alas ! to be one of the alleged causes of 
offence against him by those whom he had expected to 
dazzle. His little library was increased by the addition of 
the works of the most eminent novelists of the day. Heread 
Sterne and Mackenzie, Richardson and Fielding — " Tris- 
tram Shandy," and "The Man of Feeling," were his bosom 
favourites — thus having specimens of the extreme leaders 
of fiction of the time, the fashion including the delicately 



76 

or mawkishly sentimental as well as the strongly coarse 
and humourous. Curiously enough, both classes were 
read and liked by the same people, and a peculiar develop- 
ment, or affected development, of character was the 
result, for the strong, realistic, hard drinking, hard-swearing 
men of the age occasionally exemplified the influence of 
Rousseau and the French school on British literature, by 
exhibiting the sentiments, and deportment of hysterical 
young women. Clergymen sometimes paused in the 
pulpit to weep over their own eloquence, while their 
hearers followed suit in the pews, and even in legal 
circles the custom was not unknown. At the trial of 
Home Took for treason, in 1794, the Attorney-General 
in his remarks upon the case became pathetic over the 
inheritance of probity which he hoped to transmit to his 
children, and finally gave way to tears, in which emotion, 
to the surprise of the court, he was joined by his friend 
the Solicitor-General. "Just look at Mitford," remarked 
a neighbour to the accused, " what on earth is he crying 
for ? " "At the thought of the little inheritance poor Scott 
is likely to leave his children," was the retort. This fad 
of the period probably impressed itself upon the plastic 
nature of Burns, for matter-of-fact Walter Scott, on 
meeting the poet at Professor Ferguson's, considered it the 
most remarkable trait in his manner that he was so much 
affected by a print representing a soldier dead upon the 
field of battle, as to shed tears over it. The emotion would 
be real enough, there is no doubt, the manner of showing it 
was but one of the fashions of the day. Scott was 
thirteen years younger than the poet, the Attorney- 
General eight years older, and towards the end of the 
century the habit was less common, although its use 
survived in the pulpit till a much later date. 



77 

The budding poet also set himself to cultivate the 
acquaintance of his neighbours, both male and female. 
The dancing lessons would help him with the latter, and 
the formation of the Bachelors' Club shows that he had 
gained some influence over the former. In regard ta 
this institution, it will be noticed how carefully the rules 
are framed in regard to purity of manners and morals» 
The sixth rule provides that " There shall be no private 
conversation carried on during the time of debate, nor 
shall any member interrupt another while he is speaking," 
and, *' If any member shall reveal any of the speeches 
or affairs of the club, with a view to ridicule or laugh at 
any of the rest of the members, he shall be for ever ex- 
communicated from the rest of the society. All swearing 
and profane language, and particularly all obscene and 
indecent conversation, is strictly prohibited," and, from 
the tenth, " Every man proper for this society must have 
a frank, open, honest heart, above anything dirty or 
mean." There is nothing here, certainly, to indicate the 
incipient rake, but rather the young man we would now 
call "promising," and who, considering his godly up- 
bringing, and the fact that as yet he was free from vices 
of any kind, ought to have been an acquisition to the 
parish. Referring to the period of the dancing lessons, 
he writes, " Early ingrained piety and virtue kept me for 
several years afterwards within the line of innocence,"" 
and, in a letter to his old preceptor, Murdoch, dated 
January, 1783, is the following passage, "I have, indeed, 
kept pretty clear of vicious habits, and in this respect I 
hope my conduct will not disgrace the education I have 
gotten." "During the seven years we lived in 
Tarbolton Parish," testifies his brother Gilbert, "the 
foundation was laid of certain habits in my brother's- 



78 

character which afterwards became but too prominent, and 
which malice and envy have taken delight to enlarge 
upon. Though, when young, he was bashful and awk- 
ward in his intercourse with women, yet, when he 
approached manhood, his attachment to their society 
became very strong, and he was constantly the victim of 
some fair enslaver. ... As these connections were 
governed by the strictest rules of virtue and modesty, 
from which he never deviated till he reached his twenty- 
third year — [ ? twenty-sixth] he became anxious to be in 
a situation to marry." 

It may surprise those who only know Burns through a 
superficial study of his writings to learn that though his 
taste regarding the female sex in general was catholic as 
to beauty, yet his particular preferences were of a delicate 
and refined description, and not at all of the fleshly style 
which some of his productions might have led us to 
expect. He had, evidently, that highest artistic taste 
which prefers beauty of form to colouring, and the 
catalogue of his requirements is always the same. To 
Mr. Cunningham he gives it as — " A sweet face, eloquent 
eyes, fine limbs, graceful carriage." To Mrs. Dunlop, "A 
warm heart, vigorous health and sprightly cheerfulness, 
set off to the best advantage by a more than commonly 
handsome figure." To Miss Chalmers, regarding his 
wife, "I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest 
temper, the soundest constitution, and the kindest heart 
in the county." Yet bodily charms do not rank first in 
his estimation. In the scale of good wifeship, as he 
terms it, he places first good-nature, good sense, and wit. 
"Your uncommon personal advantages," he writes, 
in his earliest love letters, to his, * Dear E,' " and your 



79 

superior good sense, do not so much strike me, .... 
but that amiable goodness, that tender feminine softness, 
that endearing sweetness of disposition, with all the 
charming offspring of a warm feeling heart — the love I 
have for you is founded on the sacred principles of virtue 
and honour — believe me, my dear, it is love like this 
alone which can render the marriage state happy . . . 
there is something so mean and unmanly in the arts of 
dissimulation and falsehood that I am surprised they can 
be acted by any one, in so noble, so generous a passion 
as virtuous love .... I shall never think of pur- 
chasing your hand by any arts unworthy of a man, and, 
I will add, a Christian." 

" When," writes his brother Gilbert, " he selected any 
one out of the sovereignty of his good pleasure, to whom 
he should pay his particular attention, she was instantly 
invested with a sufficient stock of charms out of the 
plentiful stores of his own imagination; and there was 
often a great dissimilitude between his fair captivator as 
she appeared to others, and as she seemed when invested 
in the attributes he gave her." So it would appear, and 
he must have caused considerable surprise to the damsels 
of the neighbourhood by accosting them in such a singu- 
lar fashion. Probably they would think he was joking 
them, perhaps set it down to that sarcastic tendency, 
which afterwards gained him so much hatred. These 
were the methods of his salad days. He was twenty-five 
when he wrote the above, but, strange to say, after he had 
adjusted himself to the requisite level, after he had 
profited by the lessons of Mr. Richard Brown, and prac- 
tised them with Elizabeth Paton and Jean Armour, he 
still shows a wistful appreciation of the finer and more 



8o 

delicate traits in the nature of woman, and thus records 
it to Mrs. Dunlop, some time after his marriage. " We 
cannot hope, in our condition, for that highly polished 
mind, that charming delicacy of soul, which is found 
among the female world in the more elevated stations 
of life, and which is certainly the most bewitching charm 
in the famous Cestus of Venus. It is, indeed, such an 
inestimable treasure, that, when it can be had in its native 
purity ... I declare to Heaven ! I should hold it 
cheaply purchased at the expense of every other earthly 
good ! " And, writing near the anniversary of that day, 
when he had received the tidings of Mary Campbell's 
death, "There should I [in the world to come,] in 
speechless agony of rapture, again recognize my lost, my 
ever dear Mary! whose bosom was fraught with truth, 
honour, constancy and love." 

My Mary ! dear departed shade ! 

Where is thy place of blissful rest ? 
See'st thou thy lover lowly laid ? 

Hearest thou the groans that rend his breast ? 

And to Miss Chalmers, in 1787, "Thank Heaven! I 
have at last found two girls who can be luxuriantly happy 
in their own minds, and with one another, without that 
commonly necessary appendage to female bliss — a lover." 

So far as personal qualifications went, this intending 
Benedict did not seem to be one who would require to sue 
in vain. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe declared that he was 
better fitted by nature to play the part of a lover, than any 
one he had ever seen. The stoop, born of early hard 
labour, which detracted from the advantage of his five feet 
ten inches in height, was yet not unbecoming, for his form 



8i 

was well built and athletic. His face was dark and 
somewhat haughty in expression. His features more 
massive in appearance, thought Sir Walter Scott, than 
they are represented in his portraits. And others speak of 
a certain coarseness in his aspect, an effect always left by 
small-pox, and one old lady has left it on record that he 
was marked by that disease. But his eyes were the 
strong feature in his countenance — large, dark, and 
literally glowing, when he was excited by feeling or 
passion. "I never saw such another eye in a human head," 
says Sir Walter Scott, "though I have seen the most 
distinguished men of my time." His conversation, 
generally brilliant, always interesting, had an air of 
deference when he addressed it to women, which was 
captivating in the extreme. The Duchess of Gordon 
declared that it completely carried her off her feet, and 
many others have borne like testimony. At this early 
period, he seems to have been successfully practising 
this accomplishment, for we are told that on Sabbaths, 
when the lads were wont to convoy the lasses home, 
Burns could monopolise any of the company he chose, 
with ease. But he was not so successful in inducing any of 
them to form a marriage engagement with him. His 
brother Gilbert tells us that he had always a particular 
jealousy of people who were richer than himself, and that 
his love rarely settled on persons of that description. So 
it was latterly no doubt, and after his repulses in other 
quarters. 

Yet Robert Burns had a considerable amount of 
prudence in his composition, and it is likely enough 
report spoke truly in crediting both brothers with a desire 
to mate into the family of the Ronalds of the Bennels, 



82 

indeed the poet, in his verses regarding them, states 
plainly that it is only his fear of rejection that hinders 
him from pressing his suit on Anna. Such a connection 
would have been most useful in many ways to the Burns 
family, and there was a certain amount of encouragement 
to Robert in the liking which Mr. Ronald showed 
for his society. But this the girls do not seem to have 
shared, for one of them is reported to have said that she 
*'couldna see ought aboot Rabbie Burns that would 
tempt her tae sit up till twal o'clock at night wi' him." The 
housekeeper at Coilsfield, who is said to have been a 
person of superior education and manners, seems to 
have hesitated as to her decision, but finally concluded 
to abide by a previous engagement. Ellison Begbie 
appears to have jilted him, and the farmer's daughter of 
Littlehill tossed her saucy head once too often for the re- 
tention of so suspicious a lover. These disappointments, 
combined with other causes, seem to have embittered 
him, and thenceforth he turned his attention to women 
of a lower grade. 

We have dwelt thus minutely on the life of Burns, 
while in this place, and also on the manners and customs 
of the time, in regard to some explanation of a certain 
bitterness of feeling, which he seems to have aroused in 
a number of the people, echoes of which may even yet be 
heard, for hints, and nods, and shrugs, are quite as 
eloquent as words, and, on occasion, can do their work 
with quite as much precision. The only distinct 
allegation is to be found in the poems of Saunders Tait, 
who accuses the poet of immorality in connection with 
women, but we know that his first lapse in that direction 
took place after he rented Mossgiel, and was thus a 



83 

parishioner of Mauchline. That he was not intemperate, 
we learn from the testimony of his brother, who states 
that, during the seven years of his life in Tarbolton, he 
had never seen Robert the worse of liquor, and he adds 
that the poet never once exceeded his allowance of seven 
pounds per annum — while the latter in a letter to 
Murdoch, just before leaving the parish, writes, "In 
tavern matters, I am a strict economist." The most rigid 
of censors could not but admit that he did his best 
through the literary club to improve the minds and 
manners of his companions, and the example he set by 
his devotion to his daily duties was well worthy of imi- 
tation. It may be inferred, therefore, that the causes of 
offence to these good people were such as could not 
with propriety be stated, and they may reasonably be set 
down as three in number, namely, his being an incomer, 
his poverty, and, worst of all, his gift of sarcasm. The 
prejudices conceived by these isolated communities, each 
of which was a law unto itself, have already been indi- 
cated, and may still be studied to a certain extent, but 
the exceeding vindictiveness shown everywhere, both to 
public and private opponents, could scarcely now be so 
openly exhibited. Lord Cockburn speaks with horror of 
its manifestation in the Edinburgh of his days, and 
Lockhart, in his life of Burns, remarks on the feeling as 
shown in the contest between the Kilmarnock and 
Riccarton clergymen, " The Twa Herds," as " something 
which had long been banished from all popular assem- 
blies " — a great change of manners within a comparatively 
short period. Keeping this in view, the reader may be 
disposed to look more leniently on some of those 
effusions of Burns, which are regrettable as showing traces 
of this same savage animosity. 



84 

Having the usual distrust of the family at Lochlea as 
incomers, it was not surprising that the parishioners 
showed no particular favour towards the youth's efforts 
for their improvement. Some followers he fouHd among 
the farmers' sons, but the clause in the preamble to the 
rules of the club, regarding, " The self-conceited me- 
chanics of a country town," hints at something amiss in 
the society of the clachan. When Robin grew eloquent 
in the smithy, or the tavern, there were always plenty of 
listeners, but the laugh might be at him as much as with 
him, since the propriety of diction, so greatly admired in 
Ayr, would excite very different feelings in Tarbolton. 
The older people shook their heads, and, "Thocht he 
had a good deal to say for himsel," nor were they " very 
sure about his principles." This might refer to both his 
religious and political principles, but regarding the former, 
which were those of the New Licht party, few, save the 
Seceders need have objected, since both ministers of the 
parish held the same views. As to his politics, they were 
such as his passionate love of liberty would lead us to 
expect, and were shared by many of the outside worlds 
though at that period unpopular with the majority of the 
country people. The young noblemen and gentlemen 
who made the indispensable grand tour, also made the 
aquaintance of the brilliant circle of writers who, in 
the Encyclopaedia and elsewhere, were doing their best to 
awaken the French people to a sense of their public and 
private rights. As in France, so in Britain, it was the 
upper classes who initiated the movement for political 
reform, and its principles were freely discussed among 
them long ere they leavened the bulk of the nation. The 
opinion afterwards prevalent, that the desire for changes. 
in this direction was confined to the toilers for daily 



85 

bread — a visionary idea of the weavers and other seden- 
tary workers — was a mistake, these having only, at the 
hazard of their lives, abode by their convictions, until 
the matter was carried out to its legitimate issue, when 
the excesses of the Revolution had scared the most of the 
upper classes into quiescence. At this period, however, 
the struggles of the French for liberty had the open 
sympathy of the finest intellects in the land. Pitt, 
Fox, Burke, Sheridan, Philip Earl Stanhope, and 
Harry Erskine, with a host of distinguished men of 
both sides in politics, were warmly interested in the 
success of the movement. Basil, Lord Daer, had returned 
from the Continent an enthusiastic admirer of the new 
doctrines ; clever women, like Mrs. Dunlop of Dunlop, 
believed in the justice of the cause, and Dr. Maxwell of 
Dumfries, later on, served in the National Guard, was 
on duty at the execution of Louis Sixteenth, and dipped 
his handkerchief in the blood of the unfortunate 
monarch. Whether Robert Burns was nobly steadfast, 
or rashly imprudent, in publicly avowing his adherence 
to his early sentiments in after years, and at the risk of 
worldly loss, is a question which will always be differently 
answered by various temperaments, but, as in other 
matters, he paid the penalty of his opinions and actions, 
both at the time, and afterwards. 

" Poverty," says Tauler, the great preacher, "adheres 
to nothing, and nothing adheres to it," and Solomon has 
not put it more pithily. Had the Burns family come 
into the parish, backed by capital or influential connect- 
ions, they would have commanded at least a measure of 
respect, but they were well known to be but peasants, 
painfully toiling to raise themselves above the rank in 



86 

which they were born. Robert, in writing of the charms 
of the Tarbolton lasses, seems to be wistfully conscious that 
they were never to be within his reach, and to the present 
day there is a touch of scorn in some of the echoes of 
those times regarding the ploughman who had the 
ambition to soar above his equals. " He asked my 
grandmother to go with him to a dance," says the de- 
scendant of one of these fair farmeresses, *'but she refused." 
" And the reason ? " inquired the listener. " Oh, because 
she wouldn't go with him^^ accompanied by a toss of the 
head which spoke volumes. "What does that man 
Burns come here so often for," was asked in the house- 
hold at Langlands, when the stalwart figure was seen 
striding up the long bare road. Poor Robin ! and, with 
the happy faith of youth, he fancied his brilliancy was 
winning admiration from all. He knew better later on, 
however, when his satires on the clergy opened a legiti- 
mate vent for the feelings which sprang from sources not 
to be acknowledged. And it is certain that inferiors 
would not be slow to follow the example set by their 
betters. " My grandfather was his plough laddie, an' he 
aye said Burns was a swearin' wretch," is another testi- 
mony, but what of the provocation ? The poet was not 
like Carlyle, "ill to live with," but, on the contrary, 
kind and considerate, and, as we would expect, having 
great sympathy with the young. " Od, man, ye're no for 
young folk," he used to say to Gilbert, who was more 
severe in his nature. When troubles came thickly upon 
him, he became irritable, evidently, and gave way to his 
habit of sarcasm, which, more than anything else, was 
the cause of the rancour afterwards displayed against 
him. Saunders Tait tells plainly that the reason of his 
bitterness against the poet was because the latter had 



87 

made a song upon him, and, as we have mentioned, 
Babbie Tweedie believed that she was the subject of his 
verses — "Willie Wastle dwelt on Tweed," but did not 
seem to resent them. " My mother and mother-in-law 
baith shore, [reaped] beside him," says one remaining 
link with the past, "an' nane o' them liked him." This 
sounded ominous, but, upon examination, resolved itself 
into, " Oh, he was jist that sarcastic, a body didna ken 
what he wad say next ! " We know that neither from 
rich nor poor would Robin take a blow without return, 
but, unfortunately, though his retorts are preserved, the 
causes which provoked them are not known, and thus his 
memory suffers. His lines on James Humphreys, for 
instance, instantaneously produced, were provoked by 
that worthy's attempt to lecture him on some occasion of 
intemperance, real or imaginary, at MauchHne. But his 
anger, though hot at first, never lasted long, and, towards 
the end of his life, he expressed to Mrs. Riddell his deep 
regret at having used his talents in causing pain to any 
one. And that highly-strung temperament of his, so 
finely poised between ecstacy and agony, felt so keenly 
any lapse of friendship in those whom he trusted ! To 
Robert Aitken, he writes in 1786, thus: "I was for 
some time back fast getting into the pining, distrustful 
snarl of the misanthrope." Then he was so touchingly 
grateful for even the simplest kindness shown to him, as 
witness his letters to Mrs. Stewart of Stair, and to 
Mrs. Dunlop, in 1787 : "I read your letter with watery 
eyes — a very little while ago, I had scarce a friend but 
the stubborn pride of my own heart." A little later 
on he thanks Sir John Whiteford with fervour for 
interfering on his behalf when some one had traduced 
him. 



It is related that once at least he met his match in 
polemical disputation. Going to Tarbolton church by a 
short cut through the fields, he was joined by a decent 
crofter named Wallace, who, being a Seceder, was 
on his way to the meeting house. The poet saw his 
opportunity for an argument, and found an opponent 
nothing loth, and quite equal to the occasion. On 
separating, Burns gave as a parting shot, " Well I didn't 
think to meet with the Apostle Paul in Tarbolton Parish." 
*' Naw," was the answer, in the slow drawl of the country, 
**Ony mair than I thought tae forgather wi' the wild 
beasts o' Ephesus ! " 

We have placed the man in conjunction with his times, 
and think he may challenge comparison with most of his 
contemporaries. That, with his glorious gifts, his godly 
upbringing, he was no better, is to be deplored, but his 
constitution and environment must be taken into account. 
Regarding the immorality of the times the session books 
of Mauchline bear witness. That his honour, though 
rooted in dishonour, still stood, is evident, for he was not 
only willing but anxious to marry Elizabeth Paton, and 
only the influence of his family prevented him from 
doing so, and it was not his fault that Jean Armour was 
not his acknowledged wife ere her children were born. 
That he did not feel himself blameable in certain aspects 
of that affair is certain, for he writes to Ballantine in 
reference to it, " If he, [Mr. Aiken] is reconciled to my 
conduct as an honest man .... but I would not 
be beholden to the noblest being God ever created if he 
imagined me to be a scoundrel." As to intemperance, we 
have indicated the habits of the various classes, but 
Burns does not seem to have cared for drink save as 



89 

a necessary concomitant of social intercourse. In 1788, 
he writes to Clarinda from Mauchline, "Yesterday I dined 
at a friend's house at some distance, the savage hos- 
pitality of this country spent me the most part of the 
night over the nauseous potion in the bowl — this day, sick 
headache, low spirits, miserable." The truth is, he could 
never have been a hard drinker, his constitution forbade it, 
and an amount that was trivial to others proved death to 
him. In later years he writes to Mrs. Dunlop, "Taverns I 
have wholly abandoned, it is the private parties among the 
hard-drinking gentlemen of the county that do the 
mischief." Yet as has been shown there was no 
escaping the temptation, since no social function was 
complete without it. Upon the whole it was well for 
him that he was cast for early death — indeed, with his 
organisation, we are told that it was inevitable that it 
should be so. "Alas! Madam," he writes to Mrs. 
Dunlop, "Who would wish for many years?" Who, 
indeed, as they presented themselves to his vision ? 

*' Since to bear, 
The heart that burns and throbs, while yet it breaks not, 
Is worse than death, since death a blessing were." 

Since he cannot be judged by his peers, let the people 
of to-day at least try to take him in connection with his 
surroundings, and remember that the best and noblest 
men and women of his acquaintance were proud to call 
themselves his friends. The words of Mrs. Browning in 
regard to Napoleon may be equally applied to him : 

"Since he had 
The genius to be lov'd, why let him have 
The justice to be honoured in his grave." 




AROUND THE 

CASTLE O' AONTGOMERIE. 

LTHOUGH it seems rather a misnomer to give 
the elegant villa, erected in the opening years of 
the present century, this stately title, yet the 
building which Burns knew so well, and around 
which his heart and fancy clung, quite deserved the desig- 
nation, and was old and grim enough to be in keeping 
with the weird legends of the country around. But 
Montgomerie of Coilsfield, had, no doubt, in his youth, 
made the grand tour then so indispensable to a man of 
family that we are told it had to be performed if only on 
an income of three hundred a year, and when, late in life, 
and after active service abroad, he succeeded to the 
Eglinton title and estates, he amused his leisure by 
following the example of other Scots lairds of his time i» 
trying to adapt the architecture of foreign lands to different 
surroundings. He razed the castle to the ground but 
kept as close to the former site as possible, yet, most 
likely succeeding generations would prefer to have seen 
the walls hallowed by memories of the poet in place of 
Lord Eglinton's graceful structure. But the old building 
is as completely gone as the thorn tree by its side, which 
long survived it, and in whose vicinity, during the High- 
land Mary episode. Burns used to await his love. It is 
curious to notice how widely this fancy for pulling down 
their houses and building greater prevailed during most 
part of the eighteenth century, and interesting to observe 



91 

how closely the grave and the ludicrous were blended by 
the custom. In many cases it spelt ruin to the following 
generations, as these mansions, even if necessary and 
comfortable, were often more expensive than the rental 
could support, and many such throughout Scotland still 
bear witness to the folly of their builders. Even where, , 
as in the case of Coilsfield, means were plentiful, the taste 
of the projector was sometimes so bizare as to make his 
masterpiece an object of ridicule to the neighbourhood. 

Sir Walter Scott used to tell a story, which may be 
introduced here without apology, and with no special 
reference but as being a good example of the ridiculous 
side of the subject. It was in regard to a gentleman who 
had made the Continental tour rather late in life, but was 
none the less deeply bitten by the classical mania, and 
on reaching home set to work at once, pulling down the 
comfortable if plain, old home of his fathers, and, in its 
stead, building an airy erection which he dignified by the 
name of Bella Retira. On a neighbouring height, com- 
manded by the windows of the villa, he raised a very well 
simulated ruin, giving it the appellation of " Z' Eglise de 
Marie" and then called on his friends and neighbours 
to admire the effect. They eulogised it, to his face at 
least, and he would have rested satisfied, but alas ! there 
was the fly in the pot of ointment. This took the form 
of the county people of the vicinity, who could not be 
persuaded into anything but the most grotesque pronoun- 
elation of the foreign names. After all pacific arguments 
had failed, the laird felt there was nothing for it but 
coercion, so he took to sallying forth in company with a 
walking-stick which was in reality a bludgeon, and woe 
be to the unlucky wight who failed to repeat his lesson 



92 

to his master's satisfaction. There were sore bones on 
the estate, but in course of time he managed to secure a 
very fair attempt at pronunciation. This was, so far, 
well; but he had yet a misgiving that, though his retainers 
around the policies were reluctantly compelled to bend 
their wills to his, the outlying parts of the estate were 
still recalcitrant, and this, not so much that they could 
not, but that they would not, try to pronounce a language 
which, as being foreign, they held in contempt. One day, 
therefore, he extended his ramble quite to the bounds of 
his lands, and there lay in wait for an opportunity. By 
and by, a passing countryman was aware of one whom he 
took for a stranger, sauntering carelessly along, inspecting 
the landscape with an interested air. The countryman, ready 
enough for a gossip, slackened his pace as they neared 
each other, and prepared for the expected queries. " Can 
you tell me, my man, the name of that fine-looking 
mansion I see over yonder?" asked the supposed stranger. 
"Oh, aye, that's Bulrowtery," came the prompt reply. 

** Bull " began the laird, with a dangerous gleam in his 

eye, but he restrained himself and only grasped his cudgel 
more tightly. " And that romantic-looking old ruin on 
the hill, do you happen to know what it has been?" 
*' That, odd, I'm no jist sae share aboot it, but I think 
he ca'st * Legs my Leary.' " " Legs my whatty, ye donnart 
auld eediot?" was the alarming response, with a wild 
flourish of the cudgel, and if that astonished countryman 
got home without broken bones he probably owed it 
more to luck than good guiding. 

His courtship of Highland Mary was not the first 
connection of Robert Burns with the old castle, since, no 
doubt, he would be often within its walls when paying his 



93 

addresses to the housekeeper, whom he so greatly admired, 
but who could not entertain his suit. Of his connection 
with Mary Campbell, the poet has left so scanty a record 
that some have attempted to deny her residence at Coils- 
field altogether, and, as it is believed that she was for a 
time nursemaid in the family of Gavin Hamilton, prefer 
to consider that as her only situation in the neighbourhood. 
But against this theory there is the unanimous belief of 
Tarbolton, and the certain evidence of three persons 
resident in the village within the memory of people still 
alive. Two of these were fellow servants with Mary : 
Cochran Reid, who had been henwife at the Castle, and 
Jean Smith, to whom Mary had acted as assistant in the 
laundry. And both spoke of her familiarly as being 
well known to them. Now, as Highland Mary has 
been generally supposed to have been dairymaid at Coils- 
field, if a commonplace solution of the seeming difficulty 
could be accepted, it might be suggested that Mary acted 
first in the latter capacity, afterwards took service with 
the Hamiltons, and, having learned the finer branches of 
housework there, finally returned to the Castle as laundry- 
maid. The third of the parties indicated, a man named 
Andrews, was wont to relate that his brother, who died 
early in the century, had, for a time, supposed himself to 
be Mary's favourite suitor, but, when Burns entered the 
lists, he had no longer a chance. He must have remained 
her friend, however, for, when she left on her journey 
home, it was this young man, and not her betrothed, who 
conveyed her trunk to the carrier for transportation part 
of the way. It may be added that the descriptions of 
Mary, current in the district, represent her as being plain 
in appearance, but a virtuous and amiable woman. 



94 

The newly-built mansion was not long in possession 
of the Montgomeries, and its sale was one of the con- 
sequences of that tournament which brought so much 
notoriety and so little satisfaction to its projector. When 
it changed hands, the name was also altered to Mont- 
gomerie, and it seems a pity it should have been so, since 
the appellation of Coilsfield had belonged to the locality 
almost from time immemorial, in commemoration of a 
warrior chief slain in a battle close by. Historians 
cannot decide who were the combatants, and, though it 
is known that the tribe of the Damnii held the land 
around, tradition is silent as to whether they were of the con- 
tending parties, or whether, as is conjectured, other tribes 
might not have finished a flying fight on their territory. 
It is not even certain whether the name so strongly im- 
pressed upon the district was that of the chief alone, or 
only borne as one of a dynasty, or as a distinctive title, like 
the Pharaohs of Egypt. Kyle Regis, close by, seems to 
indicate the latter, and Coylton, a few miles from 
the scene of the fight, may have been the royal 
residence. The crowned barrow, a mound surmounted 
by stones, which bears his name, is supposed to denote 
the importance of those in whose honour it was raised, 
and, from this being low in size, it is inferred that the 
chief was vanquished in battle. Burns, in " The Vision," 
alludes to the common belief of the country people : — 

"There where a sceptred Pictish shade 
Stalks round his ashes lowly laid." 

And few of these would have cared to pass the grave of 
Coilus after nightfall. 

The question as to whether there were any grounds 



95 



for the tradition regarding this mound had long been 
discussed, and, in 1837, was to a certain extent settled by 
examining the barrow, when it was found that the ashes 
of its inmate, or inmates, might have been deposited there 
as early as the end of the stone age, since the bodies had 
undoubtedly been cremated. About four feet below the 
surface, and beneath several large boulders, was found a 
circular flag-stone, about three feet in diameter, under 
which was dry yellow-coloured sandy clay, then another 
small flag-stone, covering the mouth of an urn filled with 
white-coloured burnt bones. Three urns, in all, were 
found, and, amid the dry clay surrounding them, and also 
under flat stones, small heaps of bones. The urns were 
in shape exactly like flower pots, made of clay, and hard- 
ened by fire. The principal one measured six or seven 
inches in height, the same in diameter, and five-eighths of 
an inch in thickness. The indications seemed to point to 
there being little time, or possibly little heart, for elaborate 
burial rites, the urns being perfectly plain, save for a slight 
projection carried round half an inch from the top, an 
unusual occurrence, as urns have generally been found to 
possess some decorations however rude in fashion such 
might be. Neither were coins, nor armour, nor ornaments 
of any kind found : apparently only the most scant of 
burial rites had been accorded to fallen greatness. The 
urns were conveyed to Eglintoun Castle, but whether 
brought back or not is uncertain, yet it is to be hoped that 
the ashes of the noble dead were returned to their tomb, 
and spared the desecration he would most have deprecated. 

If the muirland in the vicinity of the grave of Coilus 
was not, as some suppose, the actual battle field, it must 
at least have been the scene of a very stiff encounter. 



96 

A rivulet, running down the steep bank towards the Fail, 
is still called " The Bloody Burn," reminding us of the 
Baunockburn, which was said to have run red for days 
after the fight, and this is very possible when we remem- 
ber the rude weapons of those times, and the terrible 
wounds they must have inflicted. The warriors of 
distinction, who fell here, are said to lie interred beneath 
the gray boulders scattered over the sloping ground 
near the grave of their king, while the common rank and 
file were dragged down to the level land by the water- 
side, and, surely, sweeter resting-place was never found 
for 

" The brave who sink to rest 
By all their country's wishes blest, " 

or for those slain by them in fair fight, than this quiet nook, 
sheltered by o'erhanging banks, and little troubled by the 
presence of man, where the songs of the birds and the 
ripple of the burn alone break the reverential repose, its 
name the most enduring of monuments — the "Dead 
Men's Holm," — for evermore ! 

Here tradition is also supported by the testimony of 
facts, for, when the ground was ploughed some years ago, 
various pieces of armour were found, also many bones and 
a curious trumpet resembling a crooked horn, signs of 
a hasty interment. Most likely, there was no time to 
strip the dead, and each man was buried with his 
accoutrements. 

No wonder Burns loved those "banks and braes 
around the Castle o' Montgomerie," for they are very fair 
to look upon. Two miles and a half from Tarbolton 



97 

village, where the Ayr and the Fail mingle, is said to have 
been one of his favourite trysting places with Mary 
Campbell, and the spot is pointed out where they 
exchanged their vows over the running water of the 
lesser river. But this seems doubtful, since a place 
more retired from the vicinity of a public road would 
certainly have better suited the solemnity of the occasion. 
Yet, apart from love-making, the bard much apprec- 
iated and frequented the banks of the Ayr. On the 
holm at Barskimming Mill, he composed " Man was 
made to mourn," and, for miles up the river, every pool 
and shallow was familiar to him. Near Failford the 
neighbourhood is hallowed by different memories, for 
saintly Alexander Peden, after being obliged to leave his 
kirk at New Luce in Galloway, often lingered here among 
the people whom he had taught in earlier days, some- 
times holding services by the river's brink, near the cave 
where he found shelter, and finding ample means for 
baptizing the little ones of the flock whose own pastor 
was also a fugitive. Not far off, Tarbolton's one recorded 
martyr, a lad of sixteen, met his death, at the hands of 
Lieutenant Lauder from the garrison at Sorn, for the 
sole reason, it is said, that he turned and attempted to 
fly, on the appearance of the soldiers. The stone 
recording his martyrdom is still to be seen in the village 
graveyard. Just outside the policies of Montgomerie 
is the Roman Camp at Parkmuir, which, if the fortifica- 
tions, noticeable for some distance around were 
connected with it, must have been of considerable extent. 
The roads which radiate from it in various directions are 
still plainly traceable, and some of these would no doubt 
connect with the great main road, through Galloway and 
Ayrshire, which passed to Ayr by way of Dalmellington. 



98 

Looking east from Burn street in the village, the long, 
bare, uphill road to Lochlea, three miles off, is plainly 
seen, and when Burns was on his homeward way it was 
open to him to keep the main road which skirted the 
Baal mount, then known as " The Hill," and now more 
prosaically as " Hood's Hill," but on the opposite side 
from the present way, or to cross the mount by the line 
of the existing road, having to climb the hill to do so. 
The change of direction, effected after the poet's day, is 
doubtless more convenient, but it seems a pity to have 
meddled to such an extent with this interesting monu- 
ment of antiquity merely to save a very slight difference 
in length of way. The anticipated antiquarian finds 
being very small, this alteration is all the more to be 
regretted. The poet, it will be remembered, on that 
eventful night when he composed " Dr. Hornbook," 

" Was come round about the hill, 
And toddlin' down on Willie's mill." 

when he encountered the ghastly stranger whom 
traditionary description had yet made familiar to him. 
The seat, on which they are supposed to have "eased 
their shanks " and had their confab, is still pointed out 
on the right hand side of the way, and, a short distance 
further down, is the road leading into the mill where 
Burns was so frequent and welcome a guest. It lies some 
distance off the main road in a loivn holm by the side of the 
Fail, and is so well sheltered by trees that its presence can 
scarcely be detected by strangers until close upon the 
buildings. Possibly the tenants of Lochlea were thirled 
by their lease to this mill, otherwise, if there was one at 
Millburn, as the name seems to imply, it must have 
been more convenient. In this case the ties of friendship 



99 

would draw the young farmer, and its pleasures repay 
him for the extra trouble involved by the longer journey. 
The passage of time has necessitated some changes and 
repairs on the buildings, which are evidently very old, but, 
in the main, the house and part of the mill are the same 
as in the end of last century, when these old rafters would 
ring with laughter, and hard toil be lightened by many a 
merry joke. It was a custom of that time, probably a 
remainder from an age when the miller was supposed to 
help himself to more of the mulcture than his rightful 
toll, for some trusted person to accompany the grain 
to the mill, and, under pretence of lending a hand 
in the operations, keep a shrewd eye on the farmer's 
interests. This suited Willie Muir and his friend exactly, 
and the barrow used by Burns on these occasions is still 
to be seen. It is old enough certainly to have been in 
existence at that time, being entirely made of wood and 
of very rough construction. Burns rarely passed the 
mill, on his way to or from the village, without entering, 
and an old woman, not very long dead, who was a little 
girl at that time, and servant to Mrs. Muir, used to tell of 
holding his horse while he chatted with the miller and his 
wife, with whom he was as great a favourite as with her 
husband. Burns and she used to criticise the preachers 
who took part in the communion solemnities, for, 
having outgrown what he counted "the idiot piety" of his 
earlier days, he was now qualifying for a new character, 
viz., censor-in-chief of Calvinistic doctrine. In the 
account of his life, given to Dr. Moore in 1787, he states, 
with that frankness which disarms fault finding, that he 
made polemical divinity, then fashionable, his study, in 
order that he might shine in conversation at funerals, 
between sermons, and on other occasions when lighter 

LOFC 



100 

subjects would be unsuitable. To further this end, he 
frequented the religious services for miles around, and 
they were many. How natural his desire was, let the 
young men of the present day bear witness, and, having 
the consciousness of those latent gifts which afterwards 
enthralled the cultured society of the capital, can he 
be blamed for seeking to exercise them, except that he 
chose an unfortunate channel for his eloquence ? How 
he succeeded, and the price he paid, is well known, since 
its cost taxes his memory to this day, but, unconsciously, 
he did yeoman's service to the Kirk he offended, by laying 
the axe to the root of those abuses which were her dis- 
grace, and which were ridiculed out of existence by his 
" Holy Fair." 

The Muirs proved friends in need to Burns in various 
ways, for, when Jean Armour was turned out of doors for 
the second time by her justly indignant father, it was in 
the mill she found refuge for a while, at least, and it is 
said she helped her hostess in doing miUinery, no doubt 
being glad to contribute a little to her own support during 
what must have been a trying period. Later on, when 
matters had been arranged and Jean had gone back to 
her husband at EUisland,, Mrs. Muir was called on to 
redeem a promise she had made of going through to the 
house-warming of the new steading. Willie, for some 
reason not known, was so much against this intended 
journey, that she stole away without his knowledge, at 
which he was so angry as actually to talk of corporal 
punishment for her on her return. But, though he had 
his staff laid beside his hand, ready for use, " He was so 
glad to see her," says the narrator of the incident, " that 
he never said an ill word to her." Let us hope that good 



lOI 

Mrs. Muir's heart would be none the less light in after 
years because, at some risk to her own peace, she performed 
that office of friendship. 

That most pleasant of kitchens in the Miller's house is 
still substantially the same as in the days when a well- 
known figure so often sat by its cheery ingle, and its 
present occupants are worthy successors of the kindly 
Muirs, and are ever ready to show all they possess that 
is interesting to Burns pilgrims. Long may they live to 
do so ! 




WITCHCRAFT 
IN KYLE. 

fT has been often stated, and is generally accepted as a 
fact, that the publication of Burns's " Tam o' 
Shanter" gave the death-blow to the belief in 
witchcraft throughout Ayrshire, and, in a sense, it might 
be the beginning of the end, since ridicule has often 
been effectively used against superstition ; but faith in the 
supernatural dies hard, and, when driven from the out- 
works, is apt to take refuge in the citadel, so that, though 
the country lad might grin at such belief while in the 
company of his mates, he was none the more easy in his 
mind when trudging alone, and after dark, on a road 
with a bad reputation. 

The folks of Mid Kyle had their own share of troubles 
in this respect, from the days when the wise and great 
condescended to practise the black art, possibly as a 
divertisement to the monotony of Hfe in the country, 
to the times when old wives took to it as a means of 
livelihood, and as a way of getting revenge on their 
enemies when they could not get justice. Few home- 
steads of last century were without their protection of 
rowan trees, for 

"Rowan trees and red thread 
Pit the witches tae their speed. " 



103 

while over every door, especially that of the byre, the 
horse shoe was strongly in evidence. But yet, in spite of 
these precautions, as our judicial records and fireside 
stories testify, warlocks and witches still occasionally 
contrived to work their wicked will. 

Tarbolton had an example of the first of the two 
classes before mentioned, in the person of the warlock 
laird of Fail, who acquired a portion of the lands of the 
departed friars, early in the seventeenth century. Walter 
Whiteford was probably of the same stock as the White- 
fords of Ballochmyle, and appeared to possess some 
learning and a considerable portion of humour, for he 
seemed to derive much amusement from the terror which 
his supposed powers excited in the country side. He 
must either have had strong influence at court, or have 
been well known to the king in his true character, to 
escape the fate which befell so many persons even of 
good condition, during the reign of the second Solomon, 
who prided himself on being a terror to the kingdom of 
Satan. The country people still tell of the laird's ability 
to keep the butter from forming in the churn, and of his 
magic causing the ploughs to stop while at work on a 
distant field, all except two, which had the rowan tree 
branches tied to them, and thus were able to defy his art ; 
also of his making a whole household dance until it 
pleased him to call a halt. But such tales have no 
malignity about them, and read like the mischievous 
pranks of a spirited schoolboy. He even made provision 
in his last moments — for he died a natural death — 
that no harm should occur to his retainers on the day 
of his burial, on which he knew that his master would 
accord him all the usual honours. 



I04 

His relative and pupil in the black art, Maggie Osborne, 
was not so fortunate, as she suffered by fire at Ayr. A 
curious article in her indictment was, " that she, having 
received the sacrament at the Kirk of the Muir, did retain 
it in her mouth, and afterwards spat it out at the kirk 
door, where Satan, in the form of a toad, did swallow it ! " 

Probably Burns would have been surprised had he 
lived long enough to learn that he had numbered a witch 
among his Tarbolton acquaintances. Bat his brief race 
was run, and Babbie Tweedie had to be old, and frail, 
and defenceless, before she could achieve her reputation. 
The cottage where she and her husband William Niel, a 
wabster [weaver] lived, was at Gighrie Hill, a slight 
eminence not far from Lochlea, and the shortest way 
from the farm to Tarbolton lay in that direction — past 
the very door indeed. A certain interest attaches to 
Babbie from the fact that, to the last day of her life, she 
declared herself to be the heroine of Burn's verses, 
"Willie Wastle dwelt on Tweed." Now these were not 
published till some time after the poet had left Ayrshire, 
and, in Cunningham's edition of his works, they are said 
to be written on a farmer's wife near Ellisland, but he 
gives no authority for that statement, and, as we know, 
many of Burns's writings were circulated long and widely, 
before being polished for the press. It is possible, there- 
fore, that Babbie's claim may have been valid enough, 
although her reasons for the statement have unfortunately 
not been preserved. She must have been conscious of 
having offended him in some fashion; at all events, a 
nephew, who had been much with her, was wont to relate, 
so lately as thirty years ago, that he had repeatedly heard 
her state this belief of hers as a fact. *' And was she really 



105 

as ill-favoured as the song indicated her to be?" was 
asked at the wife of her grandson, who is still alive, 
and responsible for this narration. "Na-a," was the 
reply, with a look of scorn. "She wasna weel-faured, 
an' had a bit cast in yae ee', but she was jist a rale decent, 
honest auld woman, for I mind her weel, when I was a 
lassie." 

It is not known on what grounds Babbie achieved her 
reputation for witchcraft, and it is not asserted that she 
played any particular pranks in the neighbourhood, but it 
was well for her that she lived in times which no longer 
admitted civil punishment for such as had the misfortune 
to fall under the ban of their neighbours, since special 
charges could soon have been trumped up against her, 
and that of the evil eye itself would have insured her 
condemnation. That she knew what was said of her, and 
felt it keenly, was evident on at least one occasion. A 
Greenock gentleman, in consideration of her acquaintance 
with the poet, had secured her a small " aliment," which 
she received at stated intervals from the Rev. Mr. Campbell, 
Secession minister at Tarbolton. Being at the manse on 
one such occasion she overheard the nurse girl say to her 
neighbour, " Od, Jenny, here's the witch comin', I'm gaun 
awa'." On which the old woman called to her with some 
dignity, " Dinna gang for me, lassie, I'm nae witch, but 
jist a puir auld woman that would harm naebody." 

After Babbie's death, in the early part of the century, 
her cottage of Gighrie Hill was allowed to go to ruin, and 
when, some years later, her nephew came from a distance 
to re- visit the spot, the sole remaining portion of it was 
the hearthstone, which he found with some difficulty. A 



io6 



small mound in its vicinity is all that now remains to 
indicate where the carefully avoided home of the witch 
once stood. 

While Babbie still flourished in her iniquity, it became 
a disputed point in the parish as to whether it was witch- 
craft, or the direct judgment of heaven on unbelief, which 
had caused the death of the young footman at the Castle 
o' Montgomerie, or Coilsfield, to give it the proper 
designation. The young man indicated was of the new 
school, and derided, or affected to deride, the beliefs, which 
were common to the majority, though the butler and a num- 
ber of the servants openly expressed their doubts whether 
he was really more courageous than his neighbours. One 
weakness he strongly ridiculed was the reluctance shown 
by all the maids, and most of the men of the establishment 
to visit the clachan after nightfall, if alone. Gradually 
the servants' hall became the scene of heated arguments 
for and against the existence of witches, and the possible 
return of spirits from the dead. One side led off 
with the supernatural visitor in the book of Job, the 
story of the witch of Endor and the shade of Samuel, and 
finished by quoting the modern instances of the spectres of 
Coilus, and the ghost burn, and the misdeeds of the war- 
lock laird of Fail. On the other hand, the sceptic 
laboured to prove that the account in Job was but a flight 
of poetic imagination; the episode of the witch of Endor 
not meant to be accepted literally; and finally challenged 
his opponents to show that any sober or reliable person 
had ever encountered either witch, devil, or ghost, to 
which the orthodox replied that such opinions were sim- 
ply atheistic, and certain to meet with due punishment, as 
some night he would get a fright that would try his. 



107 

mettle. Perhaps the wish was father to the thought, and 
the expected does happen occasionally. One evening 
there was a call for a messenger to the village, which no 
one seemed inclined to respond to. In such cases the 
appeal is to the bravest, and the unbeliever announced 
his willingness to fill the gap. He set out accordingly, 
but as time passed and he did not return, his fellow- 
servants became uneasy — the butler noticeably so. 
Presently the gamekeeper dropped in for a chat, and, on 
learnmg how matters stood, proposed a search party, which 
set out at once, — to find their fears only too well justified. 
At the loneliest part of the road the poor fellow was 
found stretched on the earth, his face distorted with a 
look of terror, and quite dead. Stoppage of the heart's 
action, owing to a shock, probably, the doctor gave as his 
opinion, and people felt their faith in the supernatural 
confirmed, being only uncertain as to which manifestation 
of it had stamped the lad's features with that ghastly look. 
It was never imagined that the mystery could be revealed, 
but later on a solution was provided, through the remorse 
of some of the parties concerned. It appeared that the 
butler had arranged with accomplices, outside, to give the 
youth a fright which would shake his scepticism. The 
hide of a freshly, killed bullock was procured, and a man, 
garbed in this, with the addition of a chain clanking 
alongside, made a formidable enough nondescript horror, 
sufficient to kill with fright the unfortunate lad to whom 
it appeared. Perhaps the affair was too long past for the 
actors in the practical lesson to be brought to punishment, 
for the story seems to have been hushed up, yet the vic- 
tim would not go unavenged since memory and conscience 
might inflict harder penalties than the law could have 
bestowed. 



io8 

It is curiously noticeable, in the annals of witchcraft, 
how very little worldly prosperity Satan was generally 
able to allow the subjects from whom he claimed so 
many, and such disgusting, observances. Those were 
sometimes able to help their clients a step or two up in 
the world — as high as the gallows occasionally — but as 
for themselves, beyond securing some addition to their 
daily fare — grain extorted from the fears of the farmer, 
milk charmed from the cows, or eggs which their spells 
had induced the hens to " lay away " — they really seem to 
have derived no advantages worth mentioning. We read 
of apparently better bargains being made now and again 
by the bolder and more business-like portion of these 
votaries of the evil one, but, even in such, their master 
was apt to show the shiftiness of his character, by 
turning the gold into slate stones, causing the honour 
they had gained to collapse as suddenly as it had arisen, 
or cheating them out of a year or two of the life they had 
mortgaged to him. It is interesting, therefore, to be able 
to chronicle an instance occurring in this very parish of 
Tarbolton in which Satan did provide some substantial 
good for his follower, without any apparent drawback, 
so far as this world is concerned. And it is also worth 
notice as being the latest known case on record in which 
an ally of that potentate, in this neighbourhood, scored 
any remarkable success in his service. It must have 
been well on into the first half of the present century, 
that the tenants of a small farm near the limits of Tarbol- 
ton parish found it a very hard struggle to make both 
ends meet. There was a family to bring up, the land 
was poor, the stock fast going down, and no capital to 
supply the deficiency. Year after year the hand to 
mouth fight had gone on, till it was obvious that it could 



109 

be but a matter of a very short time ere the guidman and 
his sons should sink to the level of day labourers. The 
family had the sympathy of their neighbours, mixed with 
some surprise that a man v/hose spouse was believed to 
be in league with the evil one, should yet derive no 
benefit from her art. It could only be supposed that he 
was in ignorance of the unholy compact, and that she 
wished him to be kept so, and thus could find no way of 
bettering their circumstances without exciting his sus- 
picion. So far, there were no particular proofs of witch- 
craft to bring against the woman, except that she had a 
bad temper, a sharp tongue, and that several of her 
predictions of evil to those with whom she had quarrelled 
had come to pass. But an expectation prevailed that 
sooner or later something would occur to justify their 
opinion of her. By and by, this took place in a m.ore 
startling fashion than they could have anticipated. 

One morning, the guidman^ awaking sooner than usual, 
found his wife absent from his side, and was surprised to 
hear no sound of her presence in the house. He got up 
and looked about, but she was nowhere to be seen, and, 
as time passed and still she did not appear, he became 
alarmed, and, going to the nearest neighbours, told his 
tale, and expressed his fears for her safety. They were 
quite willing to assist in the search for her, but he could 
not fail to notice the nods, and winks, and smiles that 
passed from one to the other, as they heard this proof 
positive of their suspicions. It was well known that ladies 
who went off on these nocturnal rambles, carefully calcul- 
ated on being back by a certain time, and used their arts 
to make their husbands sleep till they should return, but 
on this occasion the guidwife must have been detained, 



no 

and it would be capital sport to see her discomfiture when 
found, and hear the explanations she would be forced to 
give. With this motive on their part, the search was con- 
ducted vigorously, though for some time without success, 
till, a few hours afterwards she was discovered in the old 
graveyard at Barnweil, three miles off, professing to be 
much bewildered and in the act of turning her petticoat, 
which is known to be an infallible means of finding the 
way home when in doubt of it. On being questioned as 
to how and why she came to be in so strange a place, she 
declared that she knew nothing, except that she had been 
brought on the back of a black sow. More she could not, 
or would not, tell. That was quite enough, however, as it 
was well known that many of the unholy rites of witchcraft 
are performed in the resting-places of the dead, and, as to 
the mode of conveyance, what more suitable form could 
Satan assume than that of the animal so generally regarded 
as unclean ? After such an exposure, people kept a greater 
distance than ever from the farmer's wife. 

But not long after this incident, a great change became 
apparent in that lately struggling household. The guid- 
man largely increased his stock, engaged more labour to 
work his fields, and seemed to grudge no amount of dress- 
ing to improve them, while the family in general began 
to show every sign of comfortable prosperity. It was 
evident there could be only one explanation of all this — 
the black sow had disclosed to its rider on that memorable 
night, the whereabouts of a hidden treasure ! And strange to 
say the good fortune was lasting, so that the relations of the 
people around with those whom they had so much shunned, 
gradually softened, since folks who are well-to-do cannot 
be ignored, however the money may be acquired, and, 



Ill 

by degrees, the story of the night ride, if not forgotten, 
was judiciously kept in the back-ground. 

But still more curiously, from what subsequently trans- 
pired, it seemed as if the surmises of the neighbours 
had been, in part at least, not far wide of the mark. 
Long afterwards, when the farmer and his wife were both 
dead, a relative of theirs who had been a boy at the 
period of the sow episode, while talking over the incident 
with a friend, owned to her that he had reason to believe 
there was some truth in the story regarding the finding of 
a hidden treasure. A young son of the family, who had 
been his playmate, had, about that time, boasted to him 
of helping his father and mother to carry money into the 
house, and declared that it took several journeys to get 
it safely bestowed. 

This presents a very natural explanation of the sudden 
prosperity of the couple, the odd part of the affair being 
that the find should occur so appositely to the nightmare 
and sleep-walking of the guidwife. When we reflect on 
the disturbed state of our country in earlier times, it can 
be easily understood that much of the current coin of the 
realm, as well as ornaments, plate, and heirlooms of 
various kinds, would, in cases of sudden alarm, be 
secreted without, as well as within, their owners' premises. 
We still hear now and again of finds of this sort, and it 
is beheved that much may still remain undiscovered, since, 
besides the possibiHties of death or exile intervening, 
there was also the risk of the exact spot of the hiding 
place being forgotten. Readers of Pepy's diary will 
remember the difficulties of that gentleman in regard to 
the safety of his money, and how, when in fear of the 



112 

Dutch invasion, he engaged his wife and father to bury it 
in the garden of the latter, where, afterwards, although they 
believed they had carefully marked the place, and but 
a short time had elapsed, there was considerable difficulty 
in finding it. 

The old couple settled their family comfortably in life, 
mostly as farmers, but it was declared in the neighbour- 
hood regarding these, that however large might be the 
amount of their stock, pigs were never known to be seen 
on the premises. 

John Kelso Hunter tells of an old minister who had been 
visiting, and the manse being some distance off, and the 
night dark, had refreshed himself by a dram on the way. 
At a lonely part of the road he was surprised by a brisk 
whistling which appeared to come from one side or 
other of the turf dyke, the sound proceeding in the same 
direction as himself. The tunes were new to him, but 
had such a merry lilt, that he could not refrain from 
cracking his fingers, and keeping step to the music. Just 
as he reached his own gate, a rapid jig was struck up, so 
much resembling Tullochgorum, that he could not resist 
it, and danced till fairly exhausted. When no longer 
able to go on, he shouted, " weel whistled, billy," before 
entering his house. But the end of that mirth was heavi- 
ness. He took to his bed, and died not long after, and 
" folk said it was because he had given the deevil sic a 
kindly name, whereas he should have said, 'get thee 
behind me. Satan.' " 




BURNS 

AS BLACKPOOT. 

COUNTRY LAD," writes the poet to Dr. Moore, 
"seldom carries on a love affair without an 
assisting confidant. I possessed a curiosity, 
zeal, and intrepid dexterity, that recommended me as a 
proper second on these occasions, and I daresay I felt 
as much pleasure at being in the secret of half the love 
affairs of the parish of Tarbolton, as ever did statesman 
in knowing the intrigues of half the Courts of Europe. 
The very goose feather in my hand is with difficulty re- 
strained from giving you a couple of paragraphs on the 
love affairs of my compeers." 

Would that he had not restrained his pen, since those 
adventures, embellished by his fancy, and related in his 
own language, would have been well worth preserving. 
Fortunately we are able to present one such to the reader, 
and the setting connected with it is so interesting in 
many ways, that we make no apology for giving the 
circumstances in detail. 

The most intimate friend of Burns at this time was 
David Sillar, the son of the farmer of Spittalside, 
whom he has immortalized as his fellow "poet, lover, 
ploughman, and fiddler." He first comes into notice in 
1 78 1, when Burns proposed him as a member of the 
Bachelors' Club, and their intimacy seems to have been 

H 



114 

close and frequent during the poet's stay in the parish, 
and for some time after he left for Mossgiel. Sillar, who 
appears like his friend to have had amorous proclivities, 
at length became seriously attached to a young girl, then 
in the service of Mr. Stewart of Stair, a mansion in the 
parish of that name, and distant about two and a half 
miles from Tarbolton. He was anxious to form an en- 
gagement with her, and the usual proceeding in such 
cases was to begin visiting at the house of the charmer, 
as if merely in a friendly way, and then, if favourably 
received, gradually draw the intimacy closer, until private 
meetings became the natural result. The difficulty lay 
in commencing these visits in an apparently easy manner, 
no light task, it will be allowed, for a man in love, and 
exposed to the critical notice of the household, which 
was perfectly well aware of his intentions. In such cases, 
no wonder the help of Burns was appreciated, since 
under cover of his flow of language, and accomplishments, 
the would-be lover could make his approaches, or back 
out of the affair, with equal facility. Sillars was fortunate 
in having a friend so able to serve him, and who espoused 
his cause with all the ardour of his nature, and more 
especially since the case turned out to be of rather a 
peculiar description. 

"An ancient Tower to memory brought 
How Dettingen's bold hero fought." 

The house of which Burns afterwards wrote thus in 
" The Vision," and where Sillars and he were now to be- 
come frequent visitors, has a situation strongly suggestive 
of the " Happy Valley " of " Rasselas." It lies in the very 
heart of Kyle, on a green holm, almost encircled by a 
loop of the Ayr, here sometimes widening and flowing 



115 

shallow over its pebbly bed, and again deepening under 
overhanging tree-shaded banks into pools where the trout, 
darting to and fro among the mossy stones, entice the 
angler to their capture. The mansion nestles so deep in 
its cup-shaped hollow as to be invisible till the passer by 
is close upon it, and, on the surrounding heights, the 
thickly massed trees are said to be ranged as troops in 
order of battle, for this was originally the patrimonial 
estate of the Dalrymples, and tradition has it that these 
were planted by direction of Field Marshal the Earl of 
Stair, and represent the disposition of the British army 
on the field where he won his brilliant victory at 
Dettingen. 

With much good taste on the part of the proprietor, 
the house and its surroundings are preserved greatly as 
they were in the olden times, so that it is not difficult to 
forget the lapse of centuries, and let fancy stray to the 
days of the talented founder of the family, that astute 
lawyer and politician whose success in life was balanced 
by so many drawbacks in the public and private history 
of himself and his descendants. A short distance from 
the house, the ancient orchards, sloping to the river's 
brink, are still to be seen, but the trees, gnarled and 
moss grown, have long reverted to their natural state, and 
the fruit is sour and uneatable. Here, no doubt, the 
two sons of the Master of Stair would spend many a 
happy hour, ere the catastrophe occurred which threw so 
dark a shadow over the life of the younger boy, and long 
exiled him from home and friends. Close to the orchard 
are the buildings of the home farm, all with the same stamp 
of antiquity upon them. One huge erection, with thick 
walls and massive oaken doors, was built, as is believed 



ii6 

in the district, for a barracks to accommodate the soldiers 
kept to overawe the neighbourhood in Covenanting times. 
Possibly it was only the stable for the household, such 
requiring to be of large dimensions in days when so many 
horses must have been needed for a man of rank, whose 
avocation necessitated much travel. When the Dalrymples 
were in disgrace at Court, however, soldiers might be 
quartered there as a means of annoyance, or, it might be, 
occasionally as an auxiliary to the garrison at Sorn. The 
country people prefer to regard the building in this light, 
and believe that, in the quiet of evening, the furbishing of 
accoutrements and bustle of military life are still to be 
heard within its walls. 

But it is in Stair House that the interest of the place 
culminates. It is evidently of great antiquity, though, in 
the absence of any date, it is difficult to decide its exact 
age; but it may be the same building from which the 
Lollard Lady of Stair departed to answer before James 
Fourth for her religious beliefs. In a room on the ground 
floor, at that period the hall of the mansion, the two boys, 
before alluded to, were amusing themselves on a certain 
day while watching the arrival of a guest. The reception 
was past, the horses led to the stables, but the boys still 
lingered, for the stranger's holsters lay temptingly on the 
hall table. It was not in boy nature to refrain from 
appropriating the pistols, or from pointing them at each 
other. The common result followed, and next moment 
the elder boy lay dead on the floor and the younger was 
a fratricide. He was at once, by his father's orders, and 
without seeing his parents, placed on horseback behind a 
groom and carried down to the family estate in Galloway, 
where, for a time, by hard study, the future Field Marshal 



117 
iunconsciously prepared himself for his coming greatness. 

Certainly the magnates of olden times were easily 
satisfied in regard to domestic accommodation. In the 
House of Stair there are only two reception rooms, though 
no doubt, even till early in the present century, the lady 
of the house could use her bedroom as such, after the 
imported French fashion. The dining-room, which has 
now a space partitioned off, was of fair dimensions, 
but the withdrawing-room is small, and the comparatively 
modern fittings of both seem incongruous. In one 
adjunct of the latter room, however, romance finds a cer- 
tain scope, for a small turret chamber opens from one 
corner, having a quaint Dutch casemented window, 
probably a remainder from the reign of William Third, 
when the sovereign was widely complimented by the 
adoption of the modes in Holland ; and who more likely 
to set the fashion than the family who stood so high in 
his favour ? An ideal place for lovers this Tourelle^ and 
imagination pictures that ill-fated daughter of the house, 
"The Bride of Lammermuir," pensively watching from 
those panes till the sun should 

Strike behind the hills the way 
He was sure to come that day, 

in the times, (there must have been such,) before the 
Lord Rutherford had ceased to be a welcome guest 
beneath her parent's roof. 

But, with many people, the memories of warrior states- 
men, or unfortunate lovers, pale before that of the 
national poet, for it was in this very room that Burns 
made his first entry into the society of high-bred women, 



no 

an event which, he confessed to the lady herself long 
afte»*wards, caused him more trepidation than he felt when 
introduced to the brilliant circles of wit and beauty in 
Edinburgh. Stair estate had, before this time, passed 
from the Dalrymples, having been sold to Thomas 
Gordon, of Glenafton, son of Sir Thomas Gordon of' 
Earlstoun, whose only daughter, Catherine, succeeded, in 
consequence of the death of her brothers, to the family 
estates. She married Major-General Stewart, and, along 
with her children, one son and four daughters, resided 
mostly at Stair. The occasion of the poet's introduction 
to her is well known, arising out of her surprise and 
curiosity regarding the sounds of unwonted mirth in the 
lower regions, which were evidently of periodical 
occurrence. "It was twa neebour lads, after Peggy Orr," 
the housekeeper answered apologetically on being 
questioned. "An' ane o' them, the young farmer frae 
Lochlea, was a gey clever chiel, an' could baith write 
sangs an' play them on the fiddle." Whether the idea 
of the country lad writing songs took the lady's fancy, or 
whether it was only an attempt to relieve the loneliness of a 
life which, in winter, must have been akin to that of Mari- 
anna in the Moated Grange, we cannot tell, but no doubt 
the company in the kitchen was surprised, and probably 
rather taken aback at the request, under the circum- 
stances hke a royal command, that the poet on his next 
visit was to be shown up to the drawing-room. How he 
fared there has been often told, but the humble drama 
of the kitchen, in which he bore a prominent part, has 
not hitherto been fully narrated. 

That must have been a memorable winter in the down- 
stairs life of the old Scots Chateau. Mrs. Stewart had, 



119 

at that period, only two indoor servants, and it was, as is 
sometimes the case, the party whose interest was least 
concerned who preserved the reminiscences of that happy 
time, to be handed down by her descendants, for the 
staid housekeeper, who played propriety in the quartette, 
was greatly fascinated by her visitors, and easily won, by 
the blandishments of Burns, to favour his friend's suit. 
Independently of Peggy, the twain were sure of a hearty 
welcome, and occasionally treated to a cup of tea, a luxury 
rare to their class at that period, and the graceful little 
handleless cups, out of which the poet drank, are still 
carefully treasured in the neighbourhood. Perhaps 
the course of true love was made too smooth to be 
interesting, since an unlocked for difficulty presented 
itself. " Of a pair of lovers one loves," says that French 
proverb, which has truth in its apparent cynicism, and, in 
this case, the lack seemed to be on the female side, for, 
though Peggy professed to enjoy the visits of the 
comrades, she expressed reluctance to enter into any 
engagement. But constant dropping wears a stone; 
the suitor was ardent, his companion eloquent, and the 
housekeeper persuasive, while enlarging on the loneliness 
that would be their portion, when these visits should 
cease, for even the most devoted lover " Winna come 
ilka day tae woo," without some assurance of success, till, 
finally, Peggy yielded, and the couple were troth-plighted 
in the kitchen of Stair House, after the old approved 
fashion, with due ceremonies of vows, broken coin, and 
handclasping, having the housekeeper and Burns as 
witnesses. 

Naturally, a degree of credit attaches to those who 
carry through a love affair successfully, and the blackfoot 



120 

was jubilant. His passion for Jean Armour was in its 
first freshness, and the "Epistle to Davie," written at 
this period, overflows with the satisfaction of happiness, 

" There's a' the pleasures o' the heart, 
The lover an' the f rien ; 
Ye hae your Meg, your dearest part. 
And I my Darhng Jean ! " 

And no doubt Sillar felt duly elated at having secured 
the prize he was so eager to win, for, however capricious a 
lover, male or female, might be, so much importance 
attached to the ceremony of betrothal among the peasantry, 
even so lately as the end of last century, that it was 
rarely broken ; and, when this did happen, the act cast a 
slur on the character of the defaulter which lasted during 
life. Even the housekeeper felt that she had cause for self- 
congratulation in having helped a silly girl to a good 
husband. 

But all this satisfaction was shortlived since it proved 
that one of the contracting parties failed to share in the 
general contentment. The friends on both sides had 
scarcely finished joking the happy pair about their 
matrimonial intentions when it became evident that 
something was causing Peggy Orr much unhappiness. 
She became depressed and tearful, and, as this was 
scarcely the attitude to be expected from a bride elect, 
it excited great surprise in the household, especially as the 
mood appeared likely to continue. For a long time, she 
refused to answer any enquiries, and it was only after much 
pressing that she owned to rueing her engagement to 
David Sillar, and expressed a strong desire to be released. 
The housekeeper scolded her for a silly lass who did 



121 

not know her own mind, and for whom Sillar was too 
good a mate; Mrs. Stewart remonstrated, but all in 
in vain, and her distress became so painful that, to 
settle the matter, the lover and his companion were sent 
for. It must have been a great mortification to Sillar 
when the tale was told, especially as his sweetheart 
could, or would, give no reason for her change of mind. 
But, with much manliness, he rose to the occasion, 
declaring that he loved her too well to cause her grief, 
and that, if he had not possession of her heart, he would not 
hold her to her troth-plight. So the ring and coin were 
solemnly returned, in presence of the former witnesses, 
and the engagement declared to be annulled. It is 
curious to notice this anxiety on the girl's part to be 
formally released from an obligation which was only moral, 
and which, among the better classes, had even ceased to 
be fashionable. But certain superstitions were connected 
with it, for the subject had been weirdly treated both in 
song and story, and, in cases where the betrothal was 
naturally broken by death, if there had been no opportunity 
to set free the survivor, had not the dead lover often been 
compelled to return for that purpose ere he could find rest in 
the grave ? And thus social as well as national history 
repeats itself, for it is striking to learn of all this dis- 
turbance regarding a troth-plight occurring beneath the 
same roof under which, more than a hundred years 
earlier, poor Janet Dalrymple had possibly wept even 
more bitter tears over a contract all too easily broken ! 

In the later case, however, there was no tragic ending. 
Sillar in due time found a more appreciative sweetheart, 
who afterwards became his wife, and, leaving the country- 
side, settled in Irvine as a schoolmaster, had a considerable 



122 

sum of money Ifeft him, and was a prosperous and res- 
pected man. Peggy, so far as is known, gave no further 
reason for her conduct in the matter, but it is open to us 
to imagine that the blackfoot may have done his part only 
too well, and succeeded in inspiring that affection for 
himself which he could not call forth for another. She 
married later on, and, it is said, not too happily, and may 
have seen cause to regret her precipitancy in the matter 
of the troth-plight. 

Thus circumstances had conspired to put an end to 
the social evenings in the old House of Stair, and probably 
neither of these young men were ever again within its 
walls. Burns had now entered into the troubles of the 
Armour connection, and was paying the immediate part 
of the penalty entailed. That he could yet feel for his 
friend, however, there is no doubt, and it is possible that 
the heading of " The Lament," composed later on, may 
refer to that past episode, while the verses echo his own 
woes. Some time after comes the second " Epistle to 
Davie," written on a very different level from the first, 
and lacking the inspiration of love and happiness, which 
gave the other its charm. Sillar took his friend's en- 
couraging advice, went on with his verse writing, and 
published a volume contemporaneous with the Edinburgh 
edition of Burns, who did his best to gain subscribers 
for it, and wrote its author a kind little note, congratulating 
him on his marriage, and complaining of the formal 
manner in which the other had worded his last letter. 
This is, so far as we know, the last trace of intercourse 
between them, but Sillar, to the end of his life, spoke 
with admiring affection of his friend's talents and good 
qualities. 



123 

Mrs. Stewart had requested a sight of some of the 
young farmer's productions, and, in the midst of his 
preparations for going abroad he found time to fulfil his 
promise, sending her " The Ruined Farmer," " Handsome 
Nell," '* Stanzas in Prospect of Death," "The Vision," 
"Though Cruel Fate," "My Nannie O'," and, "The 
Lass o' Ballochmyle." These she carefully preserved, 
and, in time, they became the property of her daughter's 
stepson, Mr. Cunningham of Logan, who eventually sold 
the MSS. to a syndicate of five Ayrshire gentlemen. 
The lady was also afterwards complimented in "The 
Brigs of Ayr," as 



''Benevolence, with mild, benignant air, 
A female form, came from the tow'rs of Stair." 



But changes were in store for Mrs. Stewart, as well as for 
the poet, and perhaps the heaviest was the loss of her 
only son, a youth of great promise, who died, in 1789, 
while pursuing his studies at Strasbourg. On this occa- 
sion, Burns sent her a copy of the beautiful " Lament," 
he had composed for young Ferguson of Craigdarroch, 
whose death had occurred but a few days previously to 
that of Stewart. Subsequently, and after her husband's 
death, the lady sold her estates of Glen Afton and Stair, 
and, purchasing forty acres of land from her son-in-law, 
Cunningham of Enterkin, built on it a moderately-sized 
house, which, in reminiscence of her former home, she 
named Afton Lodge. It is supposed, with some probab- 
ility, that the song, "Flow gently, sweet Afton," was 
composed as a compliment to Mrs. Stewart, and that 
its scenery refers to Glen Afton. And, although Gilbert 
Burns declares his bro<:her wrote it for Highland Mary, 



124 

it may, like so many more of his productions, have done 
double duty. 

Mrs. Stewart survived till 1818, and, it is to be hoped, 
had a pleasant eventide of life in her new home, and with 
the society of her daughters, who are still remembered in 
the vicinity, to comfort and cheer her. She would have 
the excitement of putting her house in order to interest her, 
and the enjoyment of laying out the grounds to suit her 
own taste, but, charming as Afton Lodge may be, it lacks 
the memories which cling to the gray walls of Stair House, 
and the fascination of its surroundings, which make even 
a casual and only visit an event never to be forgotten ! 





EPILOGUE. 

UR task is ended, for, having convoyed the poet to 
the limits of the parish, he is now out of our pro- 
vince, yet we part from him with reluctance, and 
the sun seems to have set when we turn our faces to Tar- 
bolton. The stalwart figure in the plaid of the fashionable 
filemot colour, the shade of a reddish dead leaf, whose folds 
were arranged with a grace which his compeers envied but 
could not emulate, strides manfully, but with forebodings, 
onwards towards that future in which he was to find still 
deeper trouble, and even greater fame than he had antici- 
pated. He was to make friends among the highest and 
the most cultured of the land, to have intercourse with 
women who reahzed his imagination of al-1 that the sex 
could be, but with whom he could never hope to form an 
intimate connection, he was to be feasted, and flattered, 
and admired, and, through all the triumphal music, to 
carry with him the monotone of a coming sadness. 
"You are afraid I shall grow intoxicated with my 
prosperity as a poet," he writes from Edinburgh to 
Mrs. Dunlop, " Alas ! Madam, I know myself and the 
world too well ; I am willing to believe that my abilities 
deserve some notice ... I do not dissemble when 
I tell you I tremble for the consequences. The novelty 
of a poet in my obscure situation, without any of those 
advantages which are reckoned necessary for that 
character, at least at this time of day, has raised a 
practical tide of public notice which has borne me to a 
height where I am absolutely feeling certain my abilities- 



126 

are inadequate to support me, and too surely do I see 
that time when the same tide will leave me, and recede 
perhaps as far below the mark of truth — but, 'when 
proud fortune's ebbing tide recedes,' you will bear me 
witness that, when my bubble of fame was at its highest, 
I stood unintoxicated, with the inebriating cup in my 
hand, looking forward with rueful resolve to the hastening 
time when the blow of calumny should dash it to the 
ground with all the eagerness of vengeful triumph." 
And a month later he writes in the same strain to the 
Rev. Mr. Lawrie : " You are dazzled with newspaper 
accounts and distant reports, but in reaUty I have no 
great temptation to be intoxicated with the cup of pros- 
perity. Novelty may attract the attention of mankind a 
while ; to it I owe my present eclat^ but I see the time 
not far distant when the popular tide, which has borne me 
to a height of which I am perhaps unworthy, shall re- 
cede with silent celerity, and leave me a barren waste of 
sand to descend at my leisure to my former station. I 
do not say this in the affectation of modesty, I see the 
consequence is unavoidable, and am prepared for it." 

For a time after the whole of the Burns family removed 
to Mossgiel, the poet was still to be seen in his old 
haunts, but gradually the links were dropped and he 
came but seldom to the clachan. There are still a few 
among the villagers who remember his contemporaries, 
and, by their descriptions, it is possible partially to realize 
the appearance and manners of the people in times which 
wore so different a complexion from our own. In the 
summer evenings, when the shadows fall athwart the 
streets, and the people lounge around to enjoy the wel- 
come coolness, well-known figures seem to flit to and 



127 

fro, and dreamland to become reality. Here stands old 
John Lee, the shoemaker, telling with a chuckle how 
often and how successfully he acted as Blackfoot to 
Burns, and how brusquely the poet was wont to dismiss 
him when his end was served. And, yonder, Saunders 
Tait, snuff-box in hand and Kilmarnock cowl on head, 
his tailoring over for the day, stands at his door ready to 
give or receive the latest gossip, and ever anxious to 
bestow advice, were it but on the subject of sweeping 
chimneys. Babbie Tweedie makes her way up the street 
with the stiff slowness of age, and is a picturesque, though 
rather avoided figure, in her red cloak and black silk 
hood, with spotlessly clean cap showing beneath it. She is 
on her way to the Secession manse to get her aliment 
from good Mr. Campbell, but is detained by the 
Bleth'rin Bitch, who is willing to risk the dangers 
of being looked on by the evil eye for the sake 
of a crack with Babbie, who is a good listener. He, too, 
has a quaint appearance, for his ordinary garb is a tartan 
cloak, reaching to the knees, and a very high and shiny 
hat. He does not reside in the clachan, but is on a visit 
to friends, and has much to ask and to tell, but the 
interview is interrupted, for the street grows clamorous 
with the shouts of the young generation who are following 
Nannie M'Dougall, one of the last licensed beggars in 
Ayrshire, who, being lame, is carried from door to door 
in a hand-barrow. Her present bearers are unwilling, 
and bump too much for her comfort, and as Nannie's 
remonstrances are not savoury to the ears, we too will 
take the opportunity of saying " Farewell." 



THE END. 



LEGENDS FROM THE LOTHIANS, 

By ROBERT STEUART, Norn de Plume. 

Dedicated by permission to the 
EARL OF ROSEBERY. .... 

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 



" A clever book of Scotch Tales."— £nei»A Weekly. 

*' There is no mistaking their ■poy9&r."—Olaggow Herald. 

" An interesting collection of tales."— £oo&?nan. 

" Good strong stories, constructed and told with much 3,\A\\tY."— Northern 
Daily News. 

" A Ride with the Dead" has a horror of its own which holds the reader's 
attention rivetted ; and it is agreeably relieved by the vivid character sketcli- 
ing. ... A still more remarkable story is ' A Phantom Sin.' The 
conception is a thoroughly weird one. . . . The characters in this 
singular narrative are drawn with great boldness, and true to nature. . . 
Those who read it will be eager for further work from the same hand." 
—Scotiish Leader. 

"The characters seem to speak and act of their own succor A."— Kelso 
Chronicle. 

" A rare, thoroughly fresh, and most interesting volume. . . . The 
book has a distinct individuality of its own. . . . The legends are 
admirably told. . . . The pastorals, one and all, are almost perfect. 
The book will make its mark."— X>aiZy Free Press. 

" Humour, pathos, observation, and knowledge of the types and shades 
of national character are revealed in the legends and pastoral sketches. 
. . . It is a capital volume for the winter &Teside."—Scotsman. 

"The author exhibits no little dramatic power in the development of 
his stories. . . . Full of tragic interest. . . . Humour, too, and a 
shrewd perception of the Scottish character, add vigour to these legends, 
with their clever touches of the manners and habits of thought of 

a past generation We are sure to hear more of a writer who 

can wield his pen to such excellent puTpoae."— Haddingtonshire Courier. 

" The author is well versed in Scottish customs of a hundred years ago, 
and renders the Doric so as to touch the heart of any compatriot who reads 

the book He will not be long in gaining the sympathetic atten- 

tion of his countrymen."— Dat7y Mail. 

" Books which have the power of transporting their readers from their 
own immediate surroundings and setting them down within the locale of 
the story are sure to be popular. Such a book is to be found in ' Legends 
from the Lothians,' by Robert Steuart. It gives a collection of short stories 
which, though but sketches, are powerfully dramatic in their conception 
and present vivid pictures both of locality and character."— G^. A. Sala, in 
"Journal." 

Copies of above work may le had from the Publishers of this volume. 



APPENDIX. 



'HOUGH the house of James Manson in Burns 
Street has been indicated as that in which Burns 
had his initiation into Freemasonry, it is but fair 
to state that some are of opinion that this ceremony took 
place in the hall in Sandgate where the meetings of the 
debating society were held, and also the dancing classes 
attended by the poet. This hall, having a brewhouse 
beneath it, was an adjunct to the tavern of John Richard, 
which was the third house from the corner of Sandgate, 
in Montgomerie Street, and the entrance to it, as well as 
to the upper flat of the tavern, was by a narrow close 
opening from the latter street. The present outside stair 
at that time turned in a different direction, and led 
directly into this close. Above the hall was an attic, 
where the chest containing the Masonic insignia was kept. 
It is certain that the Masonic Lodge St. David's did 
meet in this building, but whether during the period in 
which it was united with St. James's, at which time 
Burns became a member, is a point difficult if not 
impossible to decide in the absence of fuller testimony 
than that at present obtainable. 



A dramatic incident which occurred in the old Kirk 
of Tarbolton, shortly before the Restoration, came to the 
knowledge of the Author too late for insertion in its 



131 

proper place, but is interesting enough to deserve notice. 
Wtiile Peden was teaching in the parish, a depraved 
woman of the place brought an accusation against him 
as foul as it was groundless, preferring it before the 
Presbytery at the time they were about to license him as 
a preacher. He solemnly protested his innocence, but 
of course the proceedings were stopped for further in- 
quiry. Returning to the parish in great distress of mind, 
he retired to a spot, near Wynford on the water of Fail, 
not far from his school premises at Altonburn, and there 
spent twenty-four hours agonising in prayer. A year 
later, the woman still adhering to her story and having 
sworn to its truth, Mr Peden was excommunicated by 
the Presbytery, and, on the Sabbath following, Mr 
Guthrie, the parish minister, was about to read the 
sentence to his congregation when a voice called "Halt !" 
and a man, starting up, declared that he was the guilty 
party, having induced his paramour to fasten the blame 
on Mr Peden by representing that the latter would be 
better able to provide for her, than he himself could. 
The culprit had fled to Ireland, but his conscience had 
so troubled him that he could remain there no longer, 
and he had thus returned very opportunely for clearing the 
character of the young cleric. Tradition says that the 
woman afterwards married very unhappily, and some years 
later committed suicide at the very spot where the victim 
of her slander had so fervently besought God to make 
his innocence apparent. 



4B 10.91 



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